EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE: The Jellyfish Whisperer

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — Jellyfish can be scary. We know they come in all shapes and sizes and some can sting, but there are a lot of unknowns as well. Enter our Extraordinary Person of the Week. He studies jellyfish and says there are folks who think jellyfish populations are on the rise. His research, though, shows that it’s a myth. In fact, jellyfish numbers rise and fall over a 20 year time frame and it’s that kind of knowledge that makes Rob Condon….the Jellyfish Whisperer.

Is it ever too early to inspire? Not if you ask these UNCW graduate students who, with the help of professor Rob Condon, helped launch a weather balloon with a group of elementary students earlier this month.

It’s one of many projects that start behind this door. “Science has a responsibility to gather the interest of those children,” Rob Condon told Daniel Seamans.
Condon has a big job researching some of the smallest things on this planet because small things have a big impact.

“So we know more about the moon and Mars than we do about our oceans and these are oceans that cover 70 percent of the Earth,” Condon said. “They are very important in terms of climate.”
He’s an oceanographer and assistant professor with UNCW’s Department of Biology and Marine Biology. He is also very rare.

“Jellyfish research is relatively new to science,” Condon says. “There’s only a handful of them(researchers) around the world, maybe 100-200 compared to fisheries and climate research in the thousands.”

Jellyfish. It’s okay to admit it. They aren’t very popular. But this jellyfish whisperer says they have role that we need to know more about.

“It’s microscopic,” Condon said as he held up a jar of barely visible jellyfish. “We know very little about that phase of the lifecycle, and then it buds off these baby jellyfish.”

He went on to say, “If you look up close at a jellyfish, it’s like a mini-ecosystem. A lot of things associate with jellyfish, little crabs, even microbes lingering right on the surface fo jelly. Again, it’s unknown why organisms do that.”

Some of this research is aided by high tech toys. “You can turn off the lights and look at the bio luminesence,” Condon said as he showed off UNCW’s deepwater robot/camera.

But the lights are always on for this oceanographer.

“We should be grateful for our oceans and even looking at jellyfish and what’s lying around it is important. Not just locally, but around the world because you have big ocean currents and these things are drifting around the ocean.”

And drifting into the extraordinary research of Rob Condon….the Jellyfish Whisperer.

There is a free event this Friday(Nov 21) called “Oceans Rock” on the campus of UNCW, 5-8 PM in Dobo Hall.
It will feature all kinds of short talks by the students about the roles our oceans play in climate, weather, and marine ecosystems.
Some of Rob’s research will be featured along with some of the work of his elementary aged researchers.
There are kid related activities on site too because Rob is passionate about teaching the youth about the importance of our environments.

Details here—-> http://uncw.edu/bio/OceansROCK.html