Over the past half century fishing has led globally to a reduction in the mean trophic level of commercially landed species, with a significant decline from large predatory fish toward plankton-eating pelagic species and low trophic-level invertebrates [1]. An implied endpoint of this 'fishing down marine food webs' is a proliferation of previously suppressed gelatinous plankton (jellyfish) [2] thriving on the food no longer consumed by fish. We report here that, in the heavily exploited northern Benguela off Namibia, a transition towards this endpoint has occurred, and jellyfish biomass (12.2 million tonnes (MT)) now exceeds the biomass of once-abundant fish (3.6 MT). This is a profound ecosystem change, with possible consequences from carbon cycling to fish stock recovery.
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