Antinuclear

And a sustained explosion in the population of jellyfish throughout the world’s oceans has the potential to be “quite catastrophic” if it is not checked, said jellyfish expert Dr Jamie Seymour from James Cook University in Queensland.

Last week at the Orot Rabin Electric Power Station in Hadera on Israel’s west coast – which uses seawater to cool its reactors – tonnes of jellyfish clogged up the filters.

At the Torness power station on the south-east coast of Scotland both reactors were shut down after jellyfish were found in their seawater filters at the end of last month.

Around the same time, the cooling system at one nuclear reactor of the Shimane plant in western Japan was blocked after a jellyfish invasion.

The seasonal warmer waters in the northern hemisphere – conducive to the growth of the cold-blooded creatures that have existed for about half a billion years – could be one explanation as to why the power plant incidents occurred in quick succession, experts said.

But global warming, the nitrification of oceans through fertiliser run-off and overfishing have also created the  environment for a huge expansion of the animals nicknamed the cockroaches of the sea, studies showed….

“Global warming increases the water temperature. These animals are cold-blooded so the warmer you make it the quicker they grow,” Dr Seymour said.