Jellyfish dishes answer to curbing teeming ocean populations

Jellyfish form a regular part of certain types of Asian cuisine. Photo: P.K Stowers

Eat a jellyfish and save the environment.

That's the recommendation from scientists who say the gelatinous sea creature is growing in abundance in the oceans and threatening biodiversity.

Niwa emeritus researcher Dennis Gordon said turning the sea creature into food could be one way to help cut back the numbers invading our seas.

He told Rachel Smalley on Newstalk ZB the floating creatures had big population booms in Asia and parts of the North Atlantic.

Growing numbers of the stinging floaters have caused problems around the world with fears they are taking over the seas.

Gordon aid jellyfish, if seasoned well, could be quite tasty. He said they were already a common part of Chinese and Japanese cuisine.

Gordon said he tried it once in Taiwan.

"The taste was great, I was not expecting it to taste so good. The texture was sort of semi-stiff and had been flavoured with something. It doesn't have a flavour of its own so lends itself to all sorts of flavour."

Preparing the dish can be pretty intensive - with it having to be first dehydrated across a period of six weeks, rehydrated and seasoned.

And not all jellyfish are suitable for consumption and even those deemed edible need to be carefully processed to ensure they are free from venomous stings.

Owner of Wellington's House of Dumplings, Vicky Ha grew up with the sea creature forming a regular part of her diet.

"It's no biggie," she told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking. "It's not as gross as you think it is, it's part of a dish, not like a whole jellyfish lying on the plate."

She said it normally came dehydrated, and to cook it, it needed to be rehydrated, slowly parboiled and then marinated with seasonings before being prepared as part of a dish.

Ha said jellyfish dishes could likely be found in a number of Taiwanese, Korean and Japanese restaurants.