Scientists are unsure about what this means for freshwater ecosystems, but the relationship between jellyfish and ocean ecology is well documented. Research into saltwater jellyfish has found that as ocean temperatures rise, so does the frequency of jellyfish blooms<\/a>. These sudden explosions in jellyfish populations are increasingly triggered by overfishing their natural predators, and when millions of jellyfish suddenly emerge, they consume massive amounts of plankton and fish larvae, disrupting food chains and fish hatcheries. Recent blooms have also caused beach closures<\/a> at various sites around the coastal United States.<\/p>\n After encountering them in Star, Brandes reached out to Idaho Fish and Game and the Idaho Department for Environmental Quality to see if he should be concerned. Other than knowing that the jellyfish are harmless to humans (their stingers can\u2019t penetrate human skin) and that they\u2019ve been in Idaho a long time, they didn\u2019t have much information for him.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously we don\u2019t like seeing introduced species because there\u2019s always a risk that they\u2019re going to be harmful or they\u2019re going to bring some disease that we don\u2019t know about,\u201d Joe Kozfkay, the state fisheries manager for Idaho Fish and Game told the Idaho Statesman. \u201cBut freshwater jellyfish have been around for a very long time. They don\u2019t seem to be increasing in abundance, nor have we noted any sort of deleterious effects on native species from them.\u201d<\/p>\n A \u2018little mystery\u2019 waiting to be solved<\/p>\n The freshwater jellyfish, or craspedacusta sowerbii, isn\u2019t a fish at all but belongs to a phylum of invertebrates called cnidarians that are almost entirely made of water. Sometimes called the \u201cPeach Blossom Jellyfish,\u201d it is native to the Yangtze River in China, these freshwater jellies most likely made their way to new habitats around the world as larvae, hitching rides on the exotic water plants and fish taken out of China and sold in pet stores around the globe, researchers said.<\/p>\n Sometimes called the \u201cpeach blossom jellyfish,\u201d Craspedacusta sowerbii are easy to miss. The earliest sightings in the U.S. date back to the early 1900s. Myriah Richerson – USGS <\/p>\n