The box jellyfish is so packed with venom that the briefest of touches can bring agonising death within 180 seconds.

And if comes under sustained attack it responds by sending its compatriots into a super-breeding frenzy in which millions of replacements are created.

Scientists discovered captured big female box jellyfish were swollen with millions of eggs - far more than they would normally carry. Similarly males were carrying billions of sperm. Trying to kill them had unleashed a breeding explosion because they are genetically programmed to ensure their survival by producing more offspring than normal when under attack.

The swarms of jellyfish are multiplying in the Western extent of the Pacific ocean and threatening 20,000 miles of coastline off Japan, Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea and Australia.

In the film scientists conclude that they swim towards land because it is easier to kill their main prey - fish - in shallow water as humans had been fishing in the deep oceans, which puts them on a dangerous and potentially fatal collision course with unwary swimmers.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/graphics/2008/02/08/eajelly108b.jpg

Has anyone seen this film? It seems really quite intersting.

Article

sif go swimming anyway....

sucks to be a salmon farmer too! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/22/eajelly122.xml

oops, same story!

last edited by mooby at 00:36:50 12/Feb/08

Oh my! Imagine getting caught up in that :S

Edit : Also, I grew up in PNG - I remember being on Fifhermans Island (off the coast) one weekend, and one of the girls from my class got stung by a box jellyfish - we were only like 7 at the time. It was insane, the screaming - Ill never forget. Anyway she almost died - especially considering we were on an island and it was 2 hours + to get back the the mainland.
Anyway Ill always remember her leg too - where she got stung. I cant remember how long it was between when it happened and when she finally came back to school, but there was still these perfect red lines wraped around her leg - looked kind of like a burn does.

Anyway, thats my jellyfish story.

last edited by Gratuitously Provocative at 13:37:38 12/Feb/08

Box jellyfish scare me more than sharks do, glad there are none where I am.

My story is paddling back from South Straddie in the Seaway. A surfer friend of mine was ahead of me, we were just riding a current that was sweeping us toward the rocks, one of those rare "I don't have to do anything" days, then all of a sudden he started looking left and right in the water.

I got a bit weary and said "Oi man, shark?" But he didn't reply. I called out again, still no reply. Then bam, in a split second he turned 90 degrees and started paddling furiously inward and sort of away from the rocks. I was a bit confused, then I started seeing flashes of blue, big flashes of blue. One, then two, then "Oh s***" entire school of those big blue jellyfish (each around 25 to 35 cms in diameter) with fat tentacles.

They don't kill you, and the sting isn't that bad (not even as bad as a green ant's really), but if you've ever had one touch you, you know how much they freak you out ... no matter how much you remind yourself what they feel like, as soon as they touch you, you act as if you've just had an electrical shock. There were probably about 200 of them in that little section, and to make it worse, even though we tried to paddle out of them, the current that had been allowing us to be lazy earlier was pushing us just straight into the heart of the school.

I came out with about 3 or 4 bad stings across the back of my legs and wrists, but it was still a laugh.

Damn jellyfish.

What happens when their populations do explode anyway? They're unstoppable killing machines right? Wonder if we can cull them somehow ...

Also Google box jellyfish stings ... I think I'd rather be burnt.

on the upside we'll get to see more of these super sexy swimsuits!

http://www.umdiewelt.de/photos/833/711/31/55535.jpg

that ^ is almost as scary as the jellyfish

haha you mean MORE scary ^

^^^ is that the new Australian swim suit for the Olympics