Of all the various creatures invading the coast of Spain (including pensioners from Northern Europe), jellyfish are perhaps the least welcome. For a bunch of brainless little, made-up-mostly-of-water suckers, they could be a real pain (the jellyfish, not the pensioners).
The Guardian reports that in November, scientists at the Barcelona-based Institute of Marine Sciences began studying the life cycles of jellyfish off the Costa Brava, and detected large numbers of the Pelagia noctiluca, also known as the “mauve stinger”, growing in the winter, ready for an assault on Spain’s beaches in the summer.
Back in 2006, 21,000 people had been stung on the beaches of Catalonia, while on a single day in August, 400 bathers were treated at a beach in Málaga. The causes of the jellyfish problem are apparently over-fishing and global warming. Here we go again.