Jellyfish blooms and outbreaks in the coastal marine environment are a growing worldwide issue. They pose a threat to human coastal marine activities, to human and environmental health. Jellyfish blooms result from a variety of natural hydro-climatic factors and anthropogenic activities, including fishing and overexploitation of living resources, eutrophication, coastal constructions, maritime transport combined with environmental and climatic changes. During this talk, we will discover the role and importance of jellyfish in marine ecosystems and the main ecological and anthropogenic drivers behind jellyfish species outbreaks in the Mediterranean and Arabian Gulf and associated risks.

Dr. Mohamed Najib Daly Yahia is a professor in Marine Environmental Science at Qatar University (QU). Before joining QU in 2018, he held a professorship at Carthage University in Tunisia in the Department of Marine Ecology and Oceanography, where for 30 years he taught and developed research in the topics of marine plankton taxonomy, applied coastal ecology and ecotoxicology.

From 2014 and 2018, he was the co-director of a Joint Tunisia-French International Laboratory (LMI COSYS-MED), and he has been a Principal Investigator in a number of European Union funded projects. At QU, he is developing new applied research on the characterization of copepods and jellyfish in the Arabian Gulf.

Dr. Najib is also conducting research on coral bleaching, and on Whale Sharks. During his career he has authored more than 70 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and has supervised 9 PhDs, 30 Research and Professional Masters, as well as 30 Graduate Senior Projects including 12 at Qatar University.