A raw caramel craze is sweeping Japan. At the same time, fishermen in the Sea of Japan are tormented by invasive swarms of Echizen Kurage (Nomura’s jellyfish), a giant jellyfish that weighs up to 450 pounds and measures two meters wide. A group of enterprising students at Obama Fisheries High School (located in the Japanese town of Obama no less!) have brought together these disparate phenomena by developing a sweet and salty caramel made out of sugar, starch syrup, and jellyfish powder, which is produced by boiling jellyfish into a paste and grinding it into tiny particles. The students capture Nomura’s jellyfish in fixed fishing nets from a lake in Fukui prefecture, an area plagued by the swarms.

The Obama students aren’t content with just producing a a jellyfish caramel treat. The high schoolers have also requested that the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) put the caramels on the menu for astronauts journeying to the International Space Station, presumably in a bid to raise awareness of their tasty solution to the jellyfish problem.

Previous to producing space caramels, the Obama students developed jellyfish-infused cookies, dubbed “Ekura-chan saku-saku cookies.” The cookies, sold in boxes of 10, are available at a Fukui prefecture store for 580 yen.



Nomura’s Jellyfish captured in fixed nets

[Via Pink Tentacle]