McGauran promises action on killer jellyfish research

Science Minister Peter McGauran has pledged his support to a call for funding to research the tiny irukandji jellyfish, which has claimed two lives off the Queensland coast this year.

In an interview with north Queensland radio station AM 846, McGauran said that he would impress upon funding bodies and research agencies the importance of the issue, and try to convince them to give it priority.

"Our job is therefore to make sure that the funding bodies and research agencies have enough money to give it the priority that we now want them to," he said.

The minister said he was confident he could achieve the funding. "We've seen it in other areas of research," he said.

"Sadly, it does often take catastrophic loss of life as we have suffered recently, and unfortunately, given that research dollars are always scarce, you do have to apportion it according to priorities - now irukandji will have the priority it needs and deserves.

"A number of the agencies, including James Cook University, including the Cooperative Research Centre for Reef Management, have been doing some preliminary work but there's no doubt at all we're a long way from ever hoping to develop an anti-venene or to treat the symptoms.

"We don't even know the number of irukandji types, we don't know how to counter them, we don't know their habits, we don't know their breeding formats and the like - so we've got a lot of work to do."