The nickname – by-the-wind sailors – comes from their small sail-like structure, which catches the wind and moves them across the ocean surface.<\/p>\n
Hobro said they were often mistaken for Portuguese man o’ war but were much smaller, “brighter blue” and “generally harmless”.<\/p>\n
“So you get the kind of blue tides of the by-the-wind sailors and obviously if they catch the sunlight as well it really sparkles,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It’s stunningly beautiful and the Portuguese man o’war even more so because they have these kind of purples and pinks as well.”<\/p>\n
Hobro said by-the-wind sailors were relatively common, usually appearing in autumn and winter when ocean currents carry them long distances.<\/p>\n
About 7cm long, they cannot move themselves and are often “dumped” ashore after storms or changes in currents.<\/p>\n
Large groups strand together, she explained, because they travel in the same currents and are deposited along coastlines at the same time.<\/p>\n
Similar to Portuguese man o’ war, by-the-wind sailors are colonies of animals related to sea anemones and corals, and they possess stinging cells.<\/p>\n
Although their sting is generally considered “very mild” in comparison to Portuguese man o’ war, Hobro advised people not to touch them.<\/p>\n
“You probably wouldn’t feel it through normal fingers because human skin is fairly thick,” she said. <\/p>\n
“But if you touched your lips, face or another sensitive area, it could be quite painful and cause a tingling sensation.”<\/p>\n
She warned that even when washed ashore and appearing dead, their stinging cells can remain active and still cause discomfort and urged people to admire them from a distance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The nickname – by-the-wind sailors – comes from their small sail-like structure, which catches the wind and moves…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-645441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}