Don't get them wet, they multiply

Following on from my last post about Irukandji syndrome from a tiny jellyfish, which I naively thought was one of my rare "non-AGW" posts, I predictably found this execrable piece of bad-science merde in the Cairns Post (which explains its publication, but doesn't pardon it), where "researchers" (I use the term loosely) are now claiming that Irukandji jellyfish are increasing in numbers due to, you guessed it, climate change. Sigh. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water:

James Cook University researchers have gathered historical data from reports of irukandji stings occurring in the Cairns region during the past 60 years and concluded the season has grown from two months every year in the 1950s to a current season that lasts six months.

I'm sorry, what was that you just said? The last sixty years? They didn't even find a jellyfish responsible until the early 1960s, so exactly how are you assessing historical reports from the 1950s?

A north Queensland doctor named Jack Barnes was the first to discover the causative organism and then describe it in the landmark, and rather bizarre, 1964 MJA article "Cause and Effect of Irukandji Stingings". The intrepid doc spent countless hours looking for a likely offender, and then when he thought he might have a suspect, eschewed testing it on animal models in favour of testing it on himself. When that subsequently hurt a bit, he tested it on a male lifeguard and his own 9 year old son. They all wound up in hospital and in honour of his efforts, the jellyfish he had found was named Carukia barnesi in his honour. (Which to my mind stands as a fine example of the Australian penchant for taking the piss.)

Prior to this stellar proof that "they don't make science like they used to", there was such a thing as Irukandji Syndrome that had been recognised in divers and waders in northern Australian waters. However, extrapolating from suspected case reports is problematic even to this day, as there is often diagnostic confusion between decompression sickness (the bends) and myocardial infarcts (good ol' fashion heart attack). The first reported case of a diver even remembering SEEING a jellyfish around the time they got sick was in 1997, and often the onset of the symptoms follows sometime after when exposure is thought to have occurred.

Couple all this with the fact that we know almost nothing about the jellyfish ecology, or even how many species worldwide are capable of producing an Irukandji syndrome. Oh, and the fact that reef water temperatures aren't as far removed from the average as hysterics would have you believe, AND the fact that the human population of the state has increased almost threefold since 1961.

I'm thinking they shouldn't be so quick to extrapolate the population size of a species with a virtually unknown ecology from the number of presumed case presentations. I would say its far more likely that any trend you're looking at relates more to 1) the growing popularity of scuba diving and snorkelling as a recreational past-time and 2) cheap air travel resulting in swimming in stinger season contrary to all common sense because you're "on holiday".

I would also question how they even accessed historical medical records? Theres alot of Australian hospitals that are only making the move to digital records in the last year or so, and old hospital paper records don't get kept that long. The last time I had to find some personal records, and this is just from the eighties, they literally sent some bloke out to check the garden shed and then got back on the line to report that unfortunately they had been "archived" (with extreme prejudice), i.e. in a furnace.

Even in 2006 doctors were writing to the Editor of QJM to say:

We know little about the lifecycle of these jellyfish, and currently there is no antivenom. We hope that the recognition that Irukandji syndrome is due to many jellyfish worldwide, will spur further research into identifying the ecology of the jellyfish and the venom components responsible, and hopefully produce an effective treatment.

Its kind of amazing that one of the "researchers" involved in this study is a PhD candidate. Sigh. They really don't make science like they used to.

And from the "True to God" department...

This has nothing to do with anthropogenic climate change or the lack thereof. This is just plain freaky. A man has been stung by a thimble-sized Irukandji jellyfish 25 metres above the ocean while fishing from a bulk carrier, and needed to be airlifted back to the mainland for treatment. The resuce helicopter paramedics took awhile to work it out, but put together his symptoms and signs with the fact he reported getting sprayed with water while fishing off the deck of the cargo ship, and decided it must have been an Irukandji sting.

Australians are born with the knowledge that there is an all-pervading tacit agreement amongst the populace to maintain certain globally held beliefs about our country, for example: We all rode to school on kangaroos (this one is not negotiable, even first generation Vietnamese-Australians and Sudanese refugees know not to cock this one up when talking to foreigners), and any variation on the theme of "everything is poisonous and will kill you".

So there you go, Irukandji are tiny, translucent and essentially invisible, they are enormously venomous, hurt like a bastard and can make your blood-pressure do tumbleturns anywhere between 40 and 200+ mmHg. Thats when they're not killing you. And now THEY CAN FLY.

If this doesn't freak you out, then consider the young girl in Point Lonsdale who yesterday took home some shells from the beach and was cleaning them in the bathtub, only to have a blue-ringed octopus fall out. This one even freaks me out. Blue-ringed octopi are quite literally deadly, and they're tiny, and just to really scare the crap out of everyone, don't even display their distinctive blue rings until you piss them off.

Welcome to Australia. Its hotter than hell and everything is poisonous and will kill you, but at least we're good at sport.

Tofurkey of the Week #2

And here was me worried that it might be awhile until someone else acted like a complete turkey, but in an ecologically sensitive manner. (For the last winner, see here.)

This weeks faux-poultry plinth goes out to conservationist Leon Deschamps of Western Australia, who recently pet a feeding tiger shark in the mistaken assumption that:

1. Tiger sharks aren't aggressive. (They are, Leon. They really are. These guys were just distracted by the giant dead whale they were munching on. Tiger sharks are notoriously territorial and aggressive and accounts of their behaviour can easily be found as far back as the 1600's, when tiger sharks would follow big sailing ships for days on end. I double-dog dare you to go out in the open ocean and thrash around on the surface like a wounded fish for awhile, then ask the tigers for a cuddle when they show up. FYI: When they put their pectoral fins down and start arching their back, thats when they really feel like a pat. Heh.)

2. And for assuming, like most annoying hippies, that the organism in question actually enjoyed your impromptu back-rub.

"They were sedate in their movements and far from aggressive, despite it being a time when they are supposed to be at their most ferocious — I think they enjoyed the experience. "

With biology skills like that, a) I pity your girlfriend and b) sense a future Darwin Award in the making. I'm also suprised, given our intrepid shark botherers weren't wearing gloves, that no-one pointed out that fondling a shark can be about as much fun as humping sand paper due to the unique structure of their scales. (And here were we thinking that Movember stubble-rash was a pain in the...ummm...oh, never mind. Personally, I'm getting my own back by instigating Fanuary...but thats another post for another time.)


How to tell if your tiger shark wants a cuddle

But hang on a minute, now I'm confused! Isn't global warming going to make sharks more aggressive? At least that's what Dr. Biro of the University of New South Wales said, after he spent our taxpayer funded dollars on taking damsel fish fresh out of the larval stage, dumping them in an aquarium and randomly fluctuating the temperature. Not un-suprisingly, the poor little damsals started acting a bit wierd, and some of them got tetchy. Apparently, this is now proof that global warming is going to make sharks more aggressive. (One small segue for science, one giant leap for logical thinking everywhere.)

Ha! If this is science, I might go and read some homeopathic "research" on the grounds that it adheres more strictly to scientific process. At least homeopathic researchers, unlike Dr. Biro, don't expect you to pay for their field trips to Lizard Island, an island paradise so elite that only marine biologists and resort patrons in the Sultan of Brunei's tax bracket can afford to stay there.



Lizard Island: I am clearly in the wrong profession.
Note: Don't get me wrong, I actually like sharks. They are important to me both culturally and personally, especially tiger sharks. I also (as you might have guessed) have more first hand experience of applied marine biology than the average layperson, but sadly I cannot wax autobiographical on why that is so at this time, just suffice it to say I didn't always live in the suburbs of Sydney. Regardless, a tiger shark is a tiger shark, and they tend to act accordingly. All those teeth are generally the give away.

If you thought Buffalo Springfield were bad...

Im still technically on hiatus until after exams, but this was just too good to pass up:

Academic says cull water buffalo to curb emissions

Ha! And you thought it was fat people who were really at fault.

So there you have it people, all we need to do is round up our feral water buffalo, shoot them in the head (preferably, given the alternatives) and oila! Global warming solved!

Unfortunately, the big hole in this logic would appear to be that the biggest methane "polluters" on the planet are termites, which share the same terrain as the water buffalo. Could it actually be that the water buffalo are the unsung heroes of the outback? All this time they have been reducing our emissions by competing with the termites for plant material, and what do they get in thanks?



Now, somebody go and tell the sustainable vegetarians. I expect they'll be the first to line up for buffalo steak BBQ on Australia Day.