Spotted a jellyfish? Let Bethany Nordstrom know - Action News
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PEI

Spotted a jellyfish? Let Bethany Nordstrom know

If you've seen a jellyfish a researcher from Dalhousie University wants to know about it.

Nordstrom had 50 volunteer jellyfish spotters last year

If you've seen a jellyfish, in the water or on the land, let Bethany Nordstrom know. (Ty Basinger and Michael Abrams)

If you've seen a jellyfish a researcher from Dalhousie University wants to know about it.

Master's student Bethany Nordstrom is looking at the predator-prey dynamics between leatherback sea turtles and jellyfish.

Leatherbacks are the world's largest turtle species, and Nordstrom said they can eat 300 kilograms of jellyfish a day. The turtles migrate to waters off Nova Scotia and the Gulf of St. Lawrence looking for food, and she is looking for more information about where jellyfish are.

Nordstrom received about 4,000 reports from citizen scientists last summer. (http://wormlab.biology.dal.ca/)

She's hoping to enlist some citizen scientists in her research.

"You can either sign up with me to do a weekly beach walk and look for stranded jellyfish," said Nordstrom, "or if you can't commit to a weekly beach walk, you could just, any time you're out, on a beach or out on the water, and you see a jellyfish, you can email me and I would take that single observation."

The advantage of the weekly beach scans, saidNordstrom, is it helps her figure out where the jellyfish aren't, as well as where they are. Last year she had 50 people walking beaches once a week looking for stranded jellyfish.

She's hoping for more regular spotters this summer, and as many emails with individual sightings as she can get.

You can sign up as a beach walker, or send indviduals sighting tojellyfish@dal.ca.

With files from Island Morning