11th and 12th fact. 12 Terrifying Facts About Jellyfish.

11th and 12th fact.

That said, jellyfish can get by fine without eating; their bodies become smaller but remain in proportion. One type, Turritopsis dohrnii, could be called immortal. After it dies, some cells leave its rotting body and recombine into a polyp, a small creature like a sea anemone which, after affixing itself to a stable surface, develops into a stack of small jellyfish.
They sting and they can be poisonous, but — the last “terrifying fact” about jellyfish I’ll note — you can eat them. Not the box jellyfish but some types, including rhizostomes, are harvested by the Japanese, Chinese and others in Asia. The tentacles can be dried and stored for weeks and then cured with vinegar and cooked or eaten raw.

21,000 tons of jellyfish are harvested a year and consumed mostly in China and Japan; Gershwin suggests that eating at least some jellyfish could help control their numbers.

Flannery is dubious about jellyfish as the next big culinary trend. Figuring out how to stem the global jellification of the ocean should be our concern first and foremost. Gershwin urges us to take action, push for policies and legislation to protect our oceans and keep them hospitable for all the creatures of the sea and not just millions of jellyfish.