man-of-war makes it's presence known, with its beautiful blue-tinged gas float above and its stinging tentacles below. The can trail beneath the water as long as thirty feet, ensnaring and paralyzing unsuspecting prey. Blowing in with the trades, the man-of-war land en masse, usually on our windward shores. Not to be confused with their Atlantic cousins which go by the same name (but are larger, more tentacled, and pack more of a wallop), the critter we see here in Hawaii is a different species, Physalia utriculus. While often thought of as a jellyfish, it is actually a siphonophore: a predatory, marine colony made up of individual animals called zooids. The zooids have different forms and functions; some specialize in digestion, others in reproduction, prey-capturing, or flotation.
You've seen them, and pretty likely, you've felt them. The blue bottle, or Portuguese man-of-war makes it's presence known, with its beautiful blue-tinged gas float above and its stinging tentacles below. The can trail beneath the water as long as thirty feet, ensnaring and paralyzing unsuspecting prey. Blowing in with the trades, the man-of-war land en masse, usually on our windward shores. Not to be confused with their Atlantic cousins which go by the same name (but are larger, more tentacled, and pack more of a wallop), the critter we see here in Hawaii is a different species, Physalia utriculus. While often thought of as a jellyfish, it is actually a siphonophore: a predatory, marine colony made up of individual animals called zooids. The zooids have different forms and functions; some specialize in digestion, others in reproduction, prey-capturing, or flotation. One has to admire the design of the pneumatophore, the gas-filled float that keeps the blue bottle buoyant. A ridge along the top acts like a batten, creating a sail that transports the colony, along with the ocean currents. While the blue tinge makes it easy to spot on the beach, on the open ocean it is well camouflaged, much to the dismay of many swimmers and surfers. It is important to remember that the nematocysts - the stinging cells on the tentacle - can continue to inflict pain long after the organism has washed up on the beach. Leave it to the ghost crabs to do a little beach clean-up.
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