Assessment of Jellyfish Socioeconomic Impacts in the Mediterranean: Implications for Management

Project Information

JELLYPACTS

Grant agreement ID: 655475

DOI

10.3030/655475

Project closed

EC signature date 26 March 2015

Start date 1 September 2016

End date 30 August 2020

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 170 121,60

EU contribution

€ 170 121,60

Coordinated by

AGENCIA ESTATAL CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - JELLYPACTS (Assessment of Jellyfish Socioeconomic Impacts in the Mediterranean: Implications for Management)

Reporting period: 2016-09-01 to 2018-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Social and scientific concern about jellyfish blooms has risen over the past decades. This concern is reflected on the number of reports on jellyfish; since the 40’s the number of scientific publications on jellyfish has doubled each decade, whilst news reports have increased by over 500% over the past two decades. Aggregations of jellyfish can cause multitude of problems for different sectors of society; including the fishing industry and tourism. There is no doubt that the combination of a growing human population and the increasing use of the coastal marine environment will lead to higher encounter rates between jellyfish and humans. To add to the concern, there has been a heated scientific debate on whether jellyfish populations might be on the rise. However, regardless of whether jellyfish populations are increasing, there are no easy solutions to manage all the problems associated with jellyfish blooms. Therefore, there is an urgent need to focus research objectives towards understanding the potential of a suite of management strategies to tackle current impacts of jellyfish over ecosystem services. There are many existing strategies for managing jellyfish blooms however, these are mostly economically expensive and thus, there is a need to evaluate whether the costs of implementing particular management policies will offset the costs of jellyfish impacts. In order to device cost-effective management strategies, a focus on the interdisciplinary nature of jellyfish impacts that includes ecological, social and economic aspects such as the associated loss of people’s wellbeing is of critical importance. Unfortunately, there is a knowledge gap on the socioeconomic impacts of jellyfish and estimates are sparse and qualitative. The project proposed here has the overall goal to further the knowledge of the existing interactions between jellyfish and society by assessing the economic and social impacts stemming from their presence and the integration of this newfound knowledge into adaptive management policies.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

JellyPacts addressed ecological, social and economic aspects related to jellyfish monitoring and their management.
From an ecological perspective, existing jellyfish monitoring techniques generally offer a limited view of jellyfish populations, as they mostly only provide a snapshot in time of jellyfish presence and abundances. JellyPacts developed an innovative automatic identification system using underwater cameras and state of the art artificial intelligence and neural networks techniques. The newly developed system, called Jellytoring, allows for the identification and quantification in real-time of three of the most abundant jellyfish species in the North-Western Mediterranean (Abadal et al., 2020; doi: 10.3390/s20061708). The researcher is currently working on expanding Jellytoring to a global level, allowing for the identification of a much wider number of species. Jellytoring opens up the possibility of inexpensive jellyfish monitoring systems to attain more robust scientific data on larger scales and for applications in coastal zone management.
From a social perspective, JellyPacts developed and implemented a specifically designed survey to understand coastal users’ views and behavioural intentions associated to the presence of jellyfish. The study did not only focus on current jellyfish abundances but went further and examined potential future behaviours in hypothetical scenarios of increased jellyfish numbers. In addition, scenarios where potentially dangerous jellyfish species, such as the Portuguese man o’war (Physalia physalis) would be present in the Mediterranean due to human-induced changes, were also explored.
In addition, the researcher developed a methodology using a combination of data available in social media sites (i.e. hashtags) such as Instagram and Graph Theory Network analysis, that can be applied to understand the different concepts, ideas and perceptions associated to jellyfish (for a description of the methodology see Ruiz-Frau et al., 2020; doi: 10.1016/j.ecoser.2020.101176).
From an economic perspective, JellyPacts collected data on coastal users’ preferences for different coastal management measures to mitigate the potentially negative impacts of jellyfish on the enjoyment of the marine environment and the benefits derived from it. Economic data in the form of people’s willingness to pay for different jellyfish management measures such as warning flags, information panels, real-time information, first aid availability or contingency nets, were evaluated. Data is currently being processed.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

JellyPacts and the collaborations born from the project have yielded several innovative contributions towards the ecological and socioecological research fields.
The development of Jellytoring is, to the researcher’s knowledge, the first of its kind, developed to achieve the cost-effective and continuous monitorization of jellyfish. It opens up the possibility of inexpensive jellyfish monitoring to attain robust scientific data on larger scales and for applications such as early warning systems on beaches or the inlets of power or desalinations plants. A global scale Jellytoring version is under preparation.
The development of the methodological framework aimed at identifying people’s perceptions on the services and disservices of nature (including jellyfish) and the different array of values attached to them using social media data has also pushed the boundaries of ecosystem services assessment. The combination of social media data and the use of graph theory network to analyse text data supposes an innovative aspect, as generally social media studies focus on the use of images and its interpretation, which has an inherent researcher bias attached to it. As this methodology allows the identification of the benefits and values that people ascribe to nature, its application goes beyond the scope of jellyfish and can be applied to natural spaces in general. Works based on this novel methodology have already had a high impact in scientific communication by reaching over 60,000 users in Twitter and an article in Glaciers Hub Blog from Columbia University (https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2020/08/25/instagra-human-environment-relationships/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=august_2020
The choice experiment developed during the project contributes towards the provision of data of the willingness of society to pay for measures to mitigate jellyfish impacts in coastal areas. Although the same methodology has already been used to assess different jellyfish related aspects, no studies had previously focused on the evaluation of particular management measures.
The outputs of JellyPacts offer an improved methodology for jellyfish monitorization and an understanding of the social perceptions and reactions to the presence of jellyfish, as well as coastal users’ preferences and willingness to bear the costs of additional management measures. These aspects are fundamental components in the design of coastal management policies. The integration of the results of this study into coastal management strategies will offer the potential to improve coastal management and the perception and the experiences of coastal users, contributing to the mitigation of potential jellyfish impacts on a societal level.

Concepts related to the term "jellyfish" extracted from Instagram hashtag data

Examples of labelled training images.From left to right (P. noctiluca, R. pulmo & C. tuberculata)

Jellytoring workflow