It’s no secret. Maltese summers usually tend to get extremely hot and humid. Temperatures in excess of 35 degrees are becoming increasingly frequent. Residents and tourists alike scramble to the shores in their search for some refreshing coolness. The vastness of the Mediterranean Sea awaits them. Unfortunately, peace and comfort sea are not always promised. The culprit? Those weird-looking, tentacled, mysterious and jelly-like creatures. The feared ‘jellyfish.’
In the past year, I have been stung thrice by a jellyfish. Once on my arm in Sliema, another time on my foot in Wied l-Għasri, Għawdex, and the third time on my other arm at Ġnejna Bay. All of those were extremely painful; I almost fainted, my arm began to swell. I suffered from a throbbing pain all over my body for weeks. Intrigued by our strange relationship with these mysterious creatures, we, as the authors of this piece, decided to dive a little deeper into the Maltese relationship between humans and jellyfish, and what we can uncover about climate change, tourism, and co-existence.
Demystifying myths, understanding jellyfish
The distinctive feature of jellyfish are their tentacles. They come in varying lengths and thickness, most of which are capable of venomous stings. These tentacles capture food and defend jellyfish from turtles, seabirds, crabs, and other would-be predators.Jellyfish do not swim. Rather, their movement is entirely controlled by the currents. Nor do they choose their victim. Any contact, voluntary or not, results in a sting. They cannot distinguish between food, other animals or humans.
This leads to jellyfish to be viewed as ‘unpleasant creatures’, creatures that we often avoid, dislike, and sometimes even kill. Unsurprisingly, the relationship between humans and jellyfish is complicated, risky, and dangerous.
Our sea has suffered the worst of rapidly declining biodiversity, chemical pollution, ocean acidification and warmer temperatures. Our relationship with jellyfish becomes more complex. For example, you may remember some of the jellyfish booms that we saw in recent years. There is an explanation for this.
First, rising sea temperatures. Warmer waters accelerate jellyfish growth and reproduction, allowing them to bloom more frequently and for longer periods. As seas warm up, oxygen levels fall. This is good news for jellyfish. Unlike many other marine species, they thrive in these conditions. What’s more, warmer seas brought the highly venomous box jellyfish species into the Mediterranean.
Second, we have decimated their natural predators. Overfishing and climate change have reduced the numbers of their natural predators and competitors, such as turtles, tuna, and anchovies, giving jellyfish even more space to dominate.
Jellyfish as a threat
While researching how we (avoid to) live with jellyfish in Malta, we observed that jellyfish are often viewed as a threat.
Jellyfish were often framed as a threat to two particular groups of people – those who enjoy fishing and tourists. Whilst the focus on fishers is understandable, the emphasis on tourists is less so. Why is there such a focus on the experience of tourists? What does this focus on the tourism industry tell us about our relationship with jellyfish, marine life, and the sea?
The focus on tourists can partly be explained by the economic pressure to continue growing the tourism industry. Regardless of the risks and costs that result from its continued expansion, whether they be environmental or social, the tourism industry is ostensibly kept as a cornerstone of Malta’s post-independence economic model. Land, water, energy, and public spaces continue to be dedicated to this industry, despite arguably having reached a saturation point, creating an uneven distribution of such resources.
Narratives about jellyfish are usually told from a human perspective based on our (mostly) negative experiences with them, and without considering the jellyfish’s value. Often, unpleasant, risky or dangerous creatures are seen as merely a threat to human health and safety, provoking human control and eradication by, for example, removing jellyfish from their waters and letting them die on the shores. Interestingly, when it comes to other humans or special animals (that humans deem worthy of ‘saving’), we already accept a kind of living together, even if it might be unpleasant. In other words, coexistence with risky animals is possible, even if potentially unpleasant – in the same way that we already coexist with other humans whom we may not like.
Towards a different world of coexistence?
In other words, this economic model normalises the idea that the sea should be prioritised for human enjoyment, especially for tourists, thereby overlooking the fact that the sea is a shared space to be enjoyed by and shared with a multitude of different species and living beings.
Instead of approaching these creatures with an economic and human-centred approach, we ought to imagine a world where our relationship with others acknowledges risk and vulnerability, and experiments with different ways of living together. These experiments need to be structural by changing the dominant economic model through focusing on sustainable and regenerative economies and by reshaping the tourism industry through investing in ecotourism, local tourism, and tactics to curb overtourism.
Other experiments are smaller and more straightforward such as preparing and protecting oneself when going swimming. These can include: informing oneself about different jellyfish, wave and wind patterns, using online resources to check which beaches are more likely to have jellyfish, wearing a wetsuit, and only swimming at beaches with lifeguards if you are at high risk of a serious reaction to a sting. Watch out for a purple flag which indicates the presence of pests, such as stinging jellyfish. The classic swimming away to avoid jellyfish stings would also do the trick.
Coexistence requires a new kind of worldview and a new ethics. Sharing the limited space, we have on this earth is not an easy ideal to pursue. In fact, creatures like jellyfish can be risky and dangerous, and coming close to them does sometimes lead to serious injuries. In this sense, it is not about shying away from the presence of risky creatures and the inescapable possibilities of injuries, pain, and death but acknowledging that as human animals, we are already sharing a planet with other creatures. This can form the basis of new practices of coexistence with all creatures – including those we may find unpleasant.