Our oceans have gotten more and more inhospitable to life—growing toxicity and emerging temperatures coupled with overfishing have led many marine species to the edge of cave in. And but there's one creature that's thriving during this seasick surroundings: the gorgeous, risky, and now really a number of jellyfish. As prime jellyfish professional Lisa-ann Gershwin describes in Stung!, the jellyfish inhabitants bloom is extremely indicative of the tragic kingdom of the world’s ocean waters, whereas additionally revealing the brilliant tenacity of those impressive creatures.
Recent documentaries approximately swarms of huge jellyfish invading eastern fishing grounds and summertime headlines approximately armadas of stinging jellyfish within the Mediterranean and Chesapeake are just the beginning—jellyfish are really taking up the oceans. regardless of their usually astonishing visual appeal, jellyfish are easy creatures with uncomplicated wishes: particularly, fewer predators and rivals, hotter waters to inspire swift development, and extra locations for his or her larvae to settle and develop. quite often, oceans which are much less favorable to fish are extra favorable to jellyfish, and those are the very stipulations that we're growing via mechanized trawling, habitat degradation, coastal development, pollutants, and weather change.
Despite their function as harbingers of marine destruction, jellyfish are really mesmerizing creatures of their personal correct, and in Stung!, Gershwin tells tales of jellyfish either appealing and lethal whereas illuminating many fascinating and weird proof approximately their behaviors and environmental variations. She takes readers again to the Proterozoic period, whilst jellyfish have been the head predator within the marine ecosystem—at a time while there have been no fish, no mammals, and no turtles; and he or she explores the function jellies have as middlemen of destruction, relocating speedily into weak ecosystems. the tale of the jellyfish, as Gershwin makes transparent, is usually the tale of the world’s oceans, and Stung! presents a distinct and pressing examine their inseparable histories—and future.