By Yun Suh-young
Local researchers have found an effective way to use the unwelcome jellyfish that are appearing frequently along the coasts and threatening human lives.
The National Fisheries Research and Development Institute (NFRDI) said Wednesday that a project to create cosmetics out of jellyfish is underway.
“We have begun a project to extract collagen from jellyfish and use them in cosmetics. This will be an effective way to use the jellyfish once only considered as a nuisance,” said Lim Chi-won, senior researcher at the institute.
Jellyfish have been appearing in mass in the western and southern coasts causing injuries and even taking human life.
An eight-year-old girl died from a jellyfish sting on Aug. 10 in Incheon while swimming at a beach. She was stung by a cannonball jellyfish. It was the first time a human death was recorded due to jellyfish.
In Busan, 1,317 people received emergency treatment due to being stung by jellyfish as of Monday.
The last time jellyfish appeared in mass on the coasts was in 2009. About 76 billion to 229 billion won of estimated economic losses are caused yearly by jellyfish as they destroy fishing gear, lower the freshness of sea water and harm vacationers on the beach.
The jellyfish, even if caught by fishing nets, are either put back into the water or treated as trash.
With the damage from jellyfish increasing by day and human lives being threatened, the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries recently requested the NFRDI to research ways to use them for cosmetics products. The idea is not new, however, as it was once pushed in 2007 but failed to take off.
This time, researchers will be improving their research and adding new findings.
But the process is not easy as there are many obstacles to overcome.
“There are many difficulties surrounding the making of cosmetics from jellyfish. There is only 0.5 percent of collagen contained in jellyfish. But in order to extract it, we must first extract water out of the jellyfish which takes up 97 percent of the jellyfish. But this process is very difficult,” said Lim.
It’s also hard to catch jellyfish in the first place.
“Catching the jellyfish is very difficult and there isn’t a method to do it effectively,” Lim said.
“We currently only have gear appropriate for laboratory use. In order to gather enough jellyfish and large amounts we need adequate and large enough equipment.”
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