Abstract
About 40 years ago, the breeding and year-round exhibition of jellyfish has started in aquariums. In the meantime, the exhibition of jellyfish has spread all over the world and is today an attraction factor for modern aquariums. In 2014 the Japanese Kamo Aquarium in Tsuruoka reopened its new building. In this new Kamo Aquarium, jellyfish play no longer a secondary role in the exhibition, but they are the main exhibits. People come to the Kamo Aquarium not to see great variety of the underwater fauna, but to see jellyfish with transparent bodies and elegant movements.
Nevertheless, even in this famous jellyfish Aquarium most of the skills required for keeping and breeding jellyfish are self-taught. Only small information is exchanged from institute to institute. This is not a question of professional secrets, but there was no common platform where jellyfish keepers could meet and exchange their experiences with each other.
Therefore, during the reopening ceremonies of the Kamo Aquarium the idea was born to organize an international jellyfish conference and it was agreed to invite for a 1st International Jellyfish Conference at the Kamo Aquarium in spring 2015. The 4 founders for this initiative were: Yoshitaka Abe, Director of Aquamarine Fukushima, Jurgen Lange, Past Director of the Berlin Zoo & Aquarium, Tatsuo Murakami, at that time Director of the Kamo Aquarium, and Motofumi Tai, editor of the largest Japanese Zoo Magazine “Animal Kingdom”.
This first gathering in March 2015 was so successful that the participants from 14 different countries suggested to repeat such a meeting in 2 years again. Spontaneously the Chinese Haichang Group invited the jellyfish specialists for the 2nd IJC in 2017 to the Haichang Polar World Tianjin. To interest a wider audience for the husbandry conditions and exhibition of jellyfish, this 2nd IJC will be combined with the Annual Meeting of the Chinese Association of Chinese Aquariums.
We invite you to participate in this unique conference. This 2nd IJC will be a chance to meet all your Chinese aquarium colleagues, to learn the Chinese methods of jellyfish husbandry and exhibition design and to exchange with colleagues from all over the world your own experiences in jellyfish husbandry which is even today still a rather new subject in the aquarium exhibition.