Jellyfish bung up output at Japan nuclear plant

TOKYO (Reuters) - A mass of jellyfish forced a Japanese nuclear power plant to slow part of its output this week after the slimy creatures blocked up the plant's seawater cooling system. "It's the first time we have had to lower power output because of jellyfish," a Chubu Electric Power Co. spokesman said.

A Primeval Tide of Toxins

MORETON BAY, AUSTRALIA -- The fireweed began each spring as tufts of hairy growth and spread across the seafloor fast enough to cover a football field in an hour. When fishermen touched it, their skin broke out in searing welts. Their lips blistered and peeled. Their eyes burned and swelled shut. Water that splashed from their nets spread the inflammation to their legs and torsos.

"It comes up like little boils," said Randolph Van Dyk, a fisherman whose powerful legs are pocked with scars. "At nighttime, you can feel them burning. I tried everything to get rid of them. Nothing worked." [...]

Off the coast of Sweden each summer, blooms of cyanobacteria turn the Baltic Sea into a stinking, yellow-brown slush that locals call "rhubarb soup." Dead fish bob in the surf. If people get too close, their eyes burn and they have trouble breathing.

On the southern coast of Maui in the Hawaiian Islands, high tide leaves piles of green-brown algae that smell so foul condominium owners have hired a tractor driver to scrape them off the beach every morning.

North of Venice, Italy, a sticky mixture of algae and bacteria collects on the Adriatic Sea in spring and summer. This white mucus washes ashore, fouling beaches, or congeals into submerged blobs, some bigger than a person.

Along the Spanish coast, jellyfish swarm so thick that nets are strung to protect swimmers from their sting.

"We're pushing the oceans back to the dawn of evolution," Jackson said, "a half-billion years ago when the oceans were ruled by jellyfish and bacteria."

It's Lovecraft via They Live: "they are turning our atmosphere into their atmosphere..."