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Jellyfish attack wipes out Northern Ireland's only salmon farm
Nov 22, 2007, 16:57 GMT
Jellyfish EPA/WU HONG
Belfast/Dublin - A seven-hour attack by jellyfish has wiped out Northern Ireland's only salmon farm, Irish national broadcaster RTE reported Thursday, citing the farm's owners.
'We are still assessing the full extent, but it's a disaster,' John Russell, Managing Director of Northern Salmon Co Ltd, told RTE.
Russell said that 100,000 fish worth more than 1 million pounds (2.1 million dollars) were killed in the attack in Antrim in the north-east of the island.
'The sea was red with these jellyfish and there was nothing we could do about it,' Russell told RTE.
The attack took place between Tuesday and Wednesday and saw the jellyfish cover the sea for 26 square kilometres to a depth of 11 metres.
Russell told RTE he was not sure if his business could survive the attack.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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Older Talkback
page: 1
What type of jellyfish were these?
Not enough into >
Aquaculture off the Northern Irish coast has been devastated by a swarm of jellyfish that left 100,000 salmon dead. Stock worth £1million were suffocated in their cages by the swarm, which is estimated to have covered 25 square kilometres of sea and been up to 10 metres thick (Reuters, BBC, Guardian, AP). Some reports say there may have been billions of the mauve stinger jellyfish.
page: 1
Fool on the hillNov 23rd, 2007 - 09:03:34
Sunfish and turtles love to eat jellyfish. They don't like plastic bags to eat and people killing them for food and they don't like their breeding grounds developed for tourism.
Perhaps we should listen to the sunfish and the turtle and disasters like this may never happen ?
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