Fish & Water - Sounds Wild
Eating Sea Jellies

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Salmon eating jellyfish (sea jellies)

On a sunny spring day in the Gulf of Alaska, a school of silver-bright chum salmon encounters a large group of jellyfish - now known as sea jellies because they are not fish. Instead of disregarding them, as most salmon would, these chums move in and start eating them.Compared to other salmon species, chums eat a lot of jelly-like prey. They can do this because they have large, specialized stomachs that allow them to consume and process enough gelatinous goodies to make it worth their while.

Long thought to be basically inedible and unexploited as a food resource, biologists are learning that many animals do eat sea jellies. Ocean sunfish, grey triggerfish, and leatherback sea all eat sea jellies; as do some seabirds like fulmars. Whale sharks and even humpback whales eat sea jellies. By using underwater cameras, analyzing DNA and fecal samples biologists have learned that penguins, eels and albatross eat far more sea jellies than previously known.

Eating a single sea jelly does not provide much nutrition, but a lot of them provide valuable fatty acids - especially if the predator doesn't have to spend much energy eating loads of sea jellies, which swim slowly in large groups known as shoals and can be easy to catch.