Beach lifeguard intervention data as a tool for detecting jellyfish population trends and jellyfish sting >hot spots>

5th International Jellyfish Bloom Symposium, 30 May to 3 June 2016, Barcelona.-- 1 page, 4 figuresDespite their ecological and socio-economic impact, on tourism, fisheries and aquaculture, for instance, quantitative data on jellyfish abundance in coastal areas is scarce. As part of the LIFE Cubomed project, we explored the usefulness of data on beach lifeguard interventions as a tool for monitoring seasonal trends and spatial distribution of coastal jellyfish.Lifeguard services in the Spanish Mediterranean cover almost all beaches during the tourist season and attend around 200,000 non-severe injuries each year. Jellyfish stings account for around 65% of these interventions. We developed a Sting Index (SI) to determine the seasonal trend of jellyfish stings at different spatial scales and consider it a good indicator of jellyfish abundance. The number of stings is standardized by the sum of injuries (wounds, dislocation, bruising, bone fracture, fainting and sunburn), which are proportional to the amount of people on the beach. We calculated the average SI over 4 years (2010-2013) at some 400 lifeguard stations along the Spanish Mediterranean. SI values ranged between 1.8 and 2.7 and showed no significant trends during this period. This could reflect stable population levels in the area. However, the SI did allow us to detect “hot spots”, where the rate of stings was up to 10 times the average, and we were able to correlate these areas to the presence of certain jellyfish species. This kind of information can be obtained from places where records are kept on jellyfish stings and can help to obtain data on jellyfish at a larger geographical scalePeer Reviewe