Re: Sail ho! But what the hell?!

John Wilkins wrote:
R Brown wrote:

"Desertphile" <desertphile@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1141099242.949982.78190@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Greetings. I have a question but I dunno who or where to ask. It
involves what I assume were a type of jellyfish. I came across several
thousand such wee beasties, and I was wondering if anyone here could
identify them for me.

http://elmerfudd.us/dp/lancer/lancer-30.htm

On July 28 2003 I set sail (alone) to deliver a 30 foot coastal sailer
to Hawaii. 16 days later I managed to crawl into San Diego, suffering
from a mysterious leak I could not find. (But that, and a cheeseburger
in my pocket, is another story altogether.)

Along the way I encountered the jellyfish tykes, though at first I
thought they were uniform bits of plastic. They had sails on their tops
which protruded out of the water. The ocean was littered with them,
mile after mile. I drew a diagram in my log book:

http://elmerfudd.us/dp/lancer/polysail.jpg

Does anyone here have an idea what they were/are? Or is my drawing
skill too poor? :-)


Just a guess, but they might be "blue bottle jellyfish" also known as
"Portuguese Man of War". Check out
http://www.australianfauna.com/bluebottlejellyfish.php I saw a few of them
washed on the shores of Manly Beach near Sydney, Australia. Nasty things -
don't touch! The size you mentioned and the colouration are what tipped me,
although they vary in size. What do you Aussies say?


We say, "Don't touch!"

My colleague, a Canadian who has gotten over his fear of all things squat and
poisonous in Australia, got a piece on him while surfing recently (serves him
right, I say. If God had meant us to surf, he'd have given us 10' feet). Nasty...

A friend of mine swam into man-o-war tentacles several years ago in the
Bahamas with no reaction, adverse or otherwise. I was surprised, but not
inclined to try the experiment myself.

.

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