Med becoming a “jellyfish soup”

PALMA
IN a couple of years time, instead of tucking into a tuna salad, we may be bouncing our cutlery off the gelatinous form of a jellyfish.
That's if the prognostications of leading biologist Enric Sala of the Spanish Scientific Research Council (CSIC) are correct.
Sala believes that we are turning the Mediterranean into a “soup of jellyfish and microbes” through overfishing, pollution and overdevelopment.
The biologist, who was recently chosen as one of the 240 most influential young people in the world, said that in only a few years time the Mediterranean will pass from being the habitat of species such as tuna and swordfish into a great pool dominated by bacterias and jellyfish.

Sala believes that in a few years time the jellyfish will form part of the Mediterranean diet. The jellyfish is already a staple of restaurant menu in many parts of Asia. It also features in the menus of some of the trendier U.S. restaurants. “We are transforming the Mediterranean into a great soup of jellyfish and microbes,” says Sala, who warns that if more maritime reserves aren't created and overfishing is allowed to continue, the only fish that will be eaten in Spain in the next few years will come from fish factories or will be imported.

Sala believes that the situation in the Mediterranean is “much more serious” than the majority of the world's other seas. He says that besides the overexploitation of the fishing stocks, the rise in temperatures and the pollution, it is a closed sea with an “enormous” coastal population. He says the incessant activity of fishing fleets has caused the extinction of a great part of larger species that only 50 years ago could still not be caught in the Mediterranean.

Sala is critical of the Spanish Government's policies, which he says is subsidizing a “destructive” and “perverse” form of fishing. “Subsidising an activity so economically and ecologically destructive does not make any sense,” says Sala. “It's absurd.” He called for the Spanish fleet to be reduced by half, the introduction of certificates for sustainable fishmongers and the true ecological cost of fish to be included in the final price.