{"id":654693,"date":"2026-06-23T21:37:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T21:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/654693\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T21:37:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T21:37:19","slug":"by-the-wind-mystery-blue-creatures-wash-up-on-welsh-beaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/654693\/","title":{"rendered":"By-the-wind: Mystery blue creatures wash up on Welsh beaches"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They might look like rock or semi-precious stones but they are actually creatures known as by-the-wind-sailors, or velella velella in Portuguese.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They are usually only a few centimetres wide and look a bit like jellyfish, but are in fact groups of tiny animals living together.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Each has a little structure on top, like a sail, which helps it travel across the surface of the sea. The bright blue is a pigment that helps protect them from sunlight. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They are hydrozoans &#8211; tiny predators who live in groups in salt water, and are related to sea anemones and coral.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Marine specialist Frankie Hobro, of Anglesey Sea Zoo, said the creatures were &#8220;beautiful&#8221;, but warned people not to touch them because of their sting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They might look like rock or semi-precious stones but they are actually creatures known as by-the-wind-sailors, or velella&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-654693","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\/654693","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=654693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}