—the invasion of a Yankee jellyfish that threatens to gobble up the main dinner dish of Caspian sturgeon, leaving them to starve.
The dinner food is the kilka, a kind of anchovy. Sturgeon love a tasty meal of kilka. But the invading Americans love kilka eggs. Many Iranians also like kilka.
The Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) reports that kilka fishermen are furious with the government for failing to carry out promises to battle the American invaders.
ISNA says that 90 fishing cooperatives have been driven out of business as the annual kilka haul has plummeted 95 percent from 100,000 tons in 2001 to 4,500 tons in 2011.
The sturgeon fishermen are also up in arms as fewer kilka in the Caspian mean fewer sturgeon the Caspian.
The Islamic Republic exposed the threat to the kilka almost a decade ago and promised to do battle with the invading jellyfish. It sought joint action by all five Caspian coastal states to import a predator that likes to gobble up the nasty jellyfish.
Six years ago. Iran expressed disgust with the failure of one of its neighbors to cooperate in the fight. It announced in June 2006 that it planned to go ahead unilaterally with plans to kill the invader.
The announcement was a surprise because Iran has always insisted that no country can do anything in the Caspian unless all countries agree until there is a treaty regulating the sea. The other four coastal states—Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan—have all agreed on a regime for the Caspian, but Iran has objected because the plan would give Iran 13 percent of the seabed rather than 20 percent. And, so, there is no agreement.
It is Kazakhstan whose objections stopped Iran and the other Caspian coastal states from importing a new jellyfish to the Caspian to eat up the predator jellyfish that is rapidly killing the eggs of the kilka, a mainstay of the Iranian fishing industry as well as food for the Caspian seal and beluga sturgeon that are in rapid decline.
The comb jellyfish that is killing the kilka is called the mnemiopsis leidyi—and it just so happens it is a deadly American killer! Mnemiopsis has lived since time immemorial along the US Atlantic and Caribbean coasts from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, around to Corpus Christi, Texas.
About 1989, mnemiopsis is assumed to have gotten an accidental free ride from the United States to the Black Sea in the water ballast of a freighter. The absence of any natural predators in the Black Sea allowed mnemiopsis to reproduce at an astronomical rate while it fed on the eggs of anchovies, rapidly ruining the anchovy fishing industry there.
In 1997, another American jellyfish, beroe ovata, arrived in the Black Sea, presumably in more ballast water. The beroe, it turns out, loves to dine on the mnemiopsis, whose numbers soon declined to tolerable levels in the Black Sea. The anchovies are celebrating.
Meanwhile, in 1999, at least one mnemiopsis made its way to the Caspian, presumably in the ballast water of a ship sailing from the Black Sea through the Russian canal system to the Caspian. In the Caspian, the mnemiopsis has had a field day gobbling up plankton and kilka eggs.
Kilka hauls are down, as are the numbers of Caspian seals and beluga sturgeon that also feed on the kilka.
The mnemiopsis is a small critter no longer than 10 centimeters (four inches). Despite its size, it can consume up to 15 times its body weight eight each day. It is non-stinging. It is self-fertilizing—that is, it can reproduce on its own without sex. It is mature two weeks after birth and can then pump out thousands of eggs every day
To deal with mnemiopsis, scientists at the Iranian Fisheries Research Organization (IFRO) began looking into the beroe in 2002. They could find nothing else in the Caspian that beroe would feed on except the mnemiopsis. With no other impact discernible from beroe, IFRO proposed importing some beroe for the Caspian.
But Hossain Negarestan of IFRO said Kazakhstan did not agree with IFRO that beroe would have no impact on the Caspian other than dining on the alien invader mnemiopsis. He told Science magazine in 2005 that Kazakhstan vetoed the beroe plan at two meetings that year.
In June 2006, Abbas-Ali Motallebi, IFRO’s director, ISNA that Iran was determined to go ahead and bring the beroe to the Caspian regardless of Kazakhstan’s objections. He did not say when or how many beroe would be imported.
But according to ISNA, six years later nothing seems to have been done and the mnemiopsis are still feasting on a declining number of kilka eggs.