The swarms of stinging jellyfish which invaded the beaches of the eastern Mediterranean, from early summer, were gone within a few weeks, but these nomad jellyfish — Rhopilema nomadica — are a symptom of a much bigger problem.
They’re not supposed to be here — or anywhere along the Levantine basin or the eastern Mediterranean Sea for that matter. In fact, they are natives of the Indian Ocean, thousands of miles away.
Marine biologist Bella Galil says they came through the Suez Canal — just one of a number of invasive species now making their home in the Mediterranean.
Invasive species like the nomad jellyfish replace the region’s native marine life, changing the ecosystem and the environment dramatically — and quickly.
Take the marbled rabbitfish, for example. It eats only algae, which sounds innocent enough. But it earned its quirky name because of its procreation habits: It reproduces like — you guessed it — a rabbit. And the enormous schools of rabbitfish that form as a result can quickly strip a habitat of all its algae.
“The habitat is cut like a forest,” says Galil. “Nothing could exist and those species lose their place in the Mediterranean.”
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Each invasive species disrupts the food-chain and changes the underwater environment.
Some of the invasive species are beautiful, but potentially deadly: the devil firefish, for example, whose numerous spines contain venom. Or the striped eel catfish, which has venomous spines running along its fins.
Devil Firefish (Pterois miles): This invasive fish has venomous spines and few predators.
“You can see that there is less life,” says underwater photographer Hagai Nativ, “With every year passing, we see more species of fish, more species from the Suez. We know that they are coming from the Indian [Ocean] … through the Suez Canal.”
Nativ makes a living filming these creatures. He says he benefits from the new fauna coming in.
“For me, it’s more colorful. It’s more colors under the water. As a photographer, as an underwater photographer, it’s a present.”
But the invaders are no gift to the ecological balance of the Mediterranean, which can’t adjust as fast to the changing world around it.
