S3E10: Transgressive Jellyfish

In this highlight Amanda talks about jellyfish and the many ways in which they are thought to be transgressive potential threats to biosecurity. Amanda reminds us to try and thinking sensitively about creatures who seem vastly different to us and to also be amazed by the feats they can accomplish. This content was originally aired in Season 5 of The Animal Turn Podcast.

 Featured: 

• Jellyfish by Peter Williams; 
• March of the Jellies by Tamar Stelling; 
• Comparative genomics of mortal and immortal cnidarians novel keys behind rejuvenation by Maria Pascal-Torner; 
• Aging and longevity in the simplest animals and the quest for immortality by Ronald S. Petralia et al; 
• Immortal jellyfish genes identified that may explain their long lives by Jason Dinh; and 
• It’s all in the (Jellyfish) Family by Kalila Morsink.

Credits:

• Claudia Hirtenfelder, producer and host 
• Amanda Bunten-Walberg, co-host
• Christiaan Mentz, sound editor and producer 
• Rebecca Shen, content producer and designer (logo and episode artwork)
• Gordon Clarke, bed music composer
• Learn more about the team here. 

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Sponsor:

Thank you to the sponsors of the fifth season

A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.

Biosecurities Research Collective
The Biosecurities and Urban Governance Research brings together scholars interested in biosecurity.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 2:40 Jellyfish
• 4:28 Inner Worlds
• 6:13 Biosecurity Issues
• 11:40 Discussion
• 16:08 Credits

Transcript

00:00 - Introduction 

• Welcome to Season 3 of The Animal Highlight, extracted from Season 5 of The Animal Turn Podcast (focused on Animals and Biosecurity). 
• We are focused on the animals that are caught up in biosecurity dramas. 
• My co-host this season is Amanda Bunten-Walberg who at the time of the recording was a PhD candidate at Queen’s University interested in questions related more-than-human ethics especially in contagion contexts, using bats and COVID19 as her focus.  
• Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law, and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) and the Biosecurities and Urban Governance Research Collective sponsored the season of The Animal Turn where this content was extracted from. 
• This season had several technical and sound issues.
• This episode considers jellyfish.
• Biosecurity and Animals season on The Animal Turn was really interesting. 
• Final episode of the Season.

02:40 – Jellyfish 

• I want to highlight jellyfish because I think it is important to direct our attention and empathy towards beings who don’t immediately evoke compassion: beings who aren’t cuddly, who don’t possess recognizable faces, or who experience the world in ways that are radically different from humans.  But I also want to talk about jellyfish because they are implicated in biosecurity in a number of fascinating ways.
• Despite their name, jellyfish are not actually fish.  “True jellyfish” are part of the phylum Cnidaria and their closest cousins include corals and anemones, not octopuses or squids like many people assume.
• When most people think of jellyfish, a drifting being with gently swaying tentacles protruding from a gelatinous-looking bell comes to mind.  This recognizable image of a jellyfish represents them at the adult medusa life stage, but jellyfish take multiple different forms throughout their lives.  For example, before they mature into adults, they exist as small, stationary polyps.  I understand why jellyfish in their adult medusa stage are most famous, because they are utterly mesmerising to watch.  Many of them are bioluminescent, and they create hauntingly beautiful underwater light shows.  My favourite jellyfish is known as the egg yolk jelly.  As an adult, they look like an egg that has been cracked underwater, with a yellow core, surrounded by a clear, gelatinous-looking outside.     

04:28 – Their Inner Worlds

•  We know a lot about the anatomy of jellyfish, but there is so little that we know about jellyfish worlds.  Most people think that jellyfish don’t think or feel pain, because they have no brains.  However, there are those who importantly caution against this assumption.  David Albert from the Roscoe Bay Marine Biological Laboratory, for example, argues that jellyfish do have a brain of sorts, with nerves that are distributed throughout their bodies, and that they exhibit more complex behaviours beyond simple reflexes (Williams 2020, 53).  While it is often assumed that jelly fish merely mindlessly drift through the ocean, research calls this assumption into question.  Peter Williams discusses Helmet jellyfish, who separate themselves into different clusters.  Each cluster has a different preference for vertical positioning.  Some clusters form as night-time groups for the purposes of feeding or reproduction.  Other clusters have been seen to form briefly, disband, and later regroup, though it is not understood why.  This suggests that jellyfish are not just passively drifting along, but that they possess more complex behaviours and social worlds than we give them credit for (Williams 2020, 53).
• In researching jellyfish, I was struck by how little we know about them, especially their inner lives, but I was also struck by how enmeshed their lives are in biosecurity issues.  Biosecurity is often thought of as an exclusively human practice, but jellyfish have their own practices for making their lives safe.  Their tentacles have stinging cells to defend against enemies or to immobilize prey.  The venom of a jellyfish has a complex composition, containing enzymes that break down tissues, neurotoxins, and pore-forming toxins that cause cells to leak their contents.  In humans, a jellyfish sting can have effects ranging from mildly irritating to life threatening (Williams 2020, 41).
• Important themes during season 5 of The Animal Turn included reproduction – who is allowed to and who isn’t - and what Lauren Van Patter refers to as “desired ecological configurations.”  Jellyfish disrupt dominantly desired ecological configurations with their unruly embodiments and reproduction.  For example, an article by Tamar Stelling outlines how in 2006, a jellyfish bloom shut down a US navy nuclear-powered supercarrier. Jellyfish bodies were sucked into the water intake for cooling the ship's reactor, clogging it up.  In 2009, a Japanese fishing boat capsized when its crew tried to haul in a net filled with giant Nomura's jellyfish who were each 2 metres wide and weighed 200 kilograms (Stelling 2006).  Peter Williams discusses how in Chesapeake Bay in North America, jellyfish would bloom in the summer and Autumn, reaching densities of 16 jellyfish per cubic meter of water.  These jellyfish densities totally disrupted the fishing and tourist industries in Chesapeake Bay.   
• Unfortunately, as a result of transgressing what is deemed desirable, jellyfish have been met with brutal eradication campaigns. These methods include sound waves, chemicals, biological controls, and birth control.  One of the most horrific methods is what is called a Jellyfish Elimination Robotic Swarm. These are essentially aquatic robots with blades that chop up jellyfish (Stelling 2016).  These campaigns are violent and devastating to jellyfish, however, in the face of these threats to life, jellyfish as a species persist and even thrive.

06:13 – Biosecurity Issues

• Jellyfish also have a fascinating relationship to one of the greatest biosecurity threats facing life on earth.  The ocean’s ecosystems are severely under stress from climate change and overfishing.  Surprisingly, it seems that many species of jellyfish are well poised to exploit these stressed conditions.  No one knows exactly why, though there are a few possible reasons:  For one, many jellyfish can tolerate a lower oxygen content in the water than other creatures.  Second, certain jellyfish may actually increase their rate of reproduction with a rise in temperature.  Third, jellyfish can go without food for a considerable amount of time.  And fourth, jellyfish have relatively few predators compared to many other sea animals (Williams 2020, 134).  These traits of many jellyfish may allow them to be especially adaptive to what are life-threatening conditions for most sea life. 
• Lastly, jellyfish exhibit incredible longevity and one species is even thought to be potentially biologically immortal.  Essentially, this species can reverse their life cycle, regressing into polyps, and restart this cycle indefinitely (Dinh 2022).  Sadly, as we often see when an animal is associated with a cure or longevity, jellyfish are experimented on.  
• Jellyfish are these amazing creatures who have marvelous embodied lives and they are also creatures who are implicated in biosecurity in surprising ways.

11:40 – Discussion 

• Tardigrades – different scales of life
• Animal Testing 

14:00 - Credits

• Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law, and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring the podcast and the Biosecurities and Urban Governance Research Collective for sponsoring the season of The Animal Turn where this content was extracted from. 
• A big thank you to Amanda Bunten-Walberg for co-hosting this season of The Animal Highlight
• This episode was produced by Claudia Hirtenfelder and edited by Christiaan Mentz. 
• The logo and episode artwork were created by Rebecca Shen. 
• Show notes compiled by Claudia Hirtenfelder
• Please rate and review wherever you listen.