A nine-year-old Israeli boy was stung by a poisonous box jellyfish on a beach on the Thai island of Ko Phangan over the weekend and died as a result shortly after, Hebrew media reported on Sunday.

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The Foreign Ministry was notified of the tragic incident while the Israeli consulate in Thailand was handling the case and in constant contact with the boy's father.

According to reports, the child was stung on Saturday, as the family was spending time at the beach, by a jellyfish strain that is considered among the most venomous in the world.

Local officials believe the boy was stung by either a box jellyfish or a sea wasp.

After he was stung and began suffering from a series of side effects, the boy was taken to a hospital in Ko Phangan where doctors tried to save his life.

According to various reports, the boy and his family have lived for several years on Ko Pha Ngan, which is located in southeast Thailand.

Thai authorities have launched an investigation into the incident.

The venom of both invertebrates – often described as the world's most venomous creatures – is highly potent and very lethal to humans, striking directly at the heart and the circulatory system. Their toxins could kill an adult human within two to five minutes.

Local authorities install nets near the shoreline to prevent the deadly jellyfish from getting too close to the coast, the ynet news site reported.

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Nomad jellyfish (Rhopilema nomadica) are being spotted all along the Israeli coast, along with large numbers of comb jellies (Ctenophora), gelatinous creatures that resemble jellyfish but do not sting, the University of Haifa's School of Marine Sciences reports.

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The nomad jellyfish is the most common jellyfish in Israeli coastal waters. It can be identified by its blue dome and many long strings that surround its tentacles. The species is known to have arrived in the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal, but is now considered a local Mediterranean species.

The jellyfish and comb jellies are currently close to the beaches and up to a few hundred meters offshore.

Dr. Hadas Lubinevsky notes that "It seems as if the migration has started, and what we've seen thus far are only the first signs."

The current assessment is that this is the standard yearly appearance of the jellyfish occurs in the hottest months of June, July, and August. 

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Dr. Tamar Lotan and Professor Dror Angel, experts at University of Haifa's Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences, explain what's behind this year's increased jellyfish swarms and what must be done moving forward.

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Q: Are we seeing increasing rates of jellyfish coming to Israel's coast?

These swarms have been happening in our region since the 1980s and in varying abundances, so until we carry out large-scale quantitative assessments (rather than impressions), the jury is out on whether there is an increase.

This year specifically is anomalous because the recent winter had exceptionally high rainfall that washed out large quantities of nutrients to our normally nutrient-poor sea, driving production rates up and providing lots of food to all members of the marine food web, including the jellyfish. The swarms recur in this region year after year because the jellyfish have become established here.

Q: What threat do they pose?

The impacts of jellyfish to the ecosystem are numerous and not necessarily all negative:

Consider that:

The jellyfish compete directly and quite efficiently with larval and young finfish over planktonic food, and in some cases, the jellies have caused these fish populations to "starve."

Jellyfish are predators, and massive swarms/blooms with large predation pressure can cause ecosystems to become unbalanced.

Jellyfish blooms mean considerable biomass in the water column, and when that material sinks and decomposes on the seafloor, it can either cause the formation of hypoxic and anoxic sediments (dead zones) or a feast to bottom dwellers (benthos) that enjoy the food (like manna in the sea).

Jellyfish blooms can cause mechanical clogging of coastal power plants that use seawater to cool their turbines, problems to desalination plants that use seawater to generate freshwater, problems to fisherfolk that want to target finfish or other marine species, all marine recreation and aquaculture farms that grow fish in cages.

Q: Can we avoid jellyfish swarms in the future?

We cannot avoid swarms, as these are natural phenomena, but we must do more research to understand the dynamics of the swarms better in order to eventually be able to predict these.

Common knowledge assumes there is ongoing competition between larval (and young) finfish and jellyfish because they all rely on the same planktonic organisms for food. Overfishing or heavy fishing pressure often results in reduced finfish populations, which may give the upper hand to their competitors, the jellyfish. So if we maintain healthier populations of finfish, this may reduce jellyfish swarms.

The same argument is applied to coastal development. Many finfish have natural nurseries near the shore, and if coastal development encroaches on these, this adds pressure to natural fish populations and threatens their survival. A solution to this is to establish marine-protected areas where coastal development does not happen to protect natural biota; this may also ultimately reduce jellyfish swarms.

Jellyfish also seem to be less affected by pollution than other marine groups. So if the sea is polluted by chemicals or other agents, the jellyfish may fare better than other groups – once again boosting their populations and success in comparison to their competition.

The solution here, of course, is to reduce marine pollution.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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