IRAN wants to set a jellyfish to catch a jellyfish – provided its neighbours agree. The Caspian Sea, whose waters Iran shares with Russia and three former Soviet states, is newly awash with an alien comb jellyfish called Mnemiopsis leidyi from the US.
M. leidyi has a voracious appetite for zooplankton, and is now starving the Caspian’s kilka, the source of much of the world’s caviar. No kilka: no caviar.
At talks on the future of the Caspian held last week in Baku, Azerbaijan, Iranian scientists suggested releasing another comb jelly, Beroe ovata, which has already tamed Mnemiopsis in the Black…
