We have too many jellyfish, so scientists want to cover them in chocolate

The bellísimo beaches of southeastern Italy feature golden sand and azure waters—but even on a midsummer’s day, you won’t find many people. The reason: Just offshore, thousands of stinging jellyfish bob in the waves.

Savvy locals warn visitors not to wade in too deep or put their heads underwater. “If you were to run into one while swimming, your face would be red like a chili for three days,” says Stefano Piraino, a marine biologist at the University of Salento.

It’s an increasingly common problem in the Mediterranean, according to Piraino, costing coastal communities millions of euros in lost tourism revenue, infrastructure damage, and fisheries losses. And jellyfish aren’t only wreaking havoc in southern Europe. In Japan, fishermen often find their catch replaced by netfuls of the throbbing blobs. Sweden even had to shut down one of its main power plants when thousands of jellyfish clogged its cooling pipes in 2011.

Marine researchers remain puzzled about what’s causing the apparent increase in jellyfish swarms—jellyfish have largely been understudied in the past and still, they remain poorly understood. Some think that the jellyfish swarms are linked to natural oscillations in environmental conditions. Others suggest that a combination of human-induced problems—including warming temperatures, ocean acidification, pollution, and overfishing—may be to blame. Additionally, jellyfish are highly adaptable and skilled at surviving in warm, polluted and acidified waters—conditions that kill many other fish. They may outcompete smaller fish, taking their place in the food web. Whatever the cause, these brainless clumps of jelly have proliferated, becoming more than just a nuisance; they are an economic curse.

Now scientists are trying to make the best of a goopy situation and turn these creatures into a money-making commodity, so people will want to hunt and sell them, rather than just throw them back into the ocean. Recently, a collaboration of marine researchers from eight different countries began a project called GoJelly to create an array of jellyfish-based products, including water filters, fish feed, face cream, fertilizers, and food

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