Question

It was believed for a long time that Jellyfish were a trophic “dead end” and that no organisms utilized jellyfish as a food source. Based on the illustration above, is it true that Jelly fish are at the top of the food chain? Explain your reasoning using the data.

Answer 1

In the Irish sea, a lot of different types of water animals eat jellyfish. It would be hard to say that they are on the top when all these animals/fish eat the jellyfish.  Out of 2500 examples of different species the herring had more than 20 percent of jellyfish in them out of 512 that were cut open to see if a jellyfish was in them. In this whole experiment 2500 sea creatures were gutted and the results definitely weren't in the jellyfishes favor. Although the Grey Gurnard, Dab, Sprat, Poor Cod and Squid do not eat much Jelly Fish. The Herring and Dragonet do. I def finitely do not think they are on the top, but they sure do not have that many sea creatures eating them. And you would of thought that the ones that did would be bigger.  I am actually very surprised to see that so many creatures were found with the Jelly Fish inside of them. I also wonder what other creatures eat it that we may not know about yet.