Velella velella on Pacifica shores -- what does it mean?

[petronius]

Many beachgoers saw an unusual site over the last couple weeks. It seemed as if the beaches were being taken over by something out of science fiction as hundreds of puffy, translucent blue animals with little wind sails washed up on the beach.

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"Normally, they live offshore, floating along and being pushed by the wind that hits the sail on the top. They are harder to notice when they are out at sea because the populations are really not that dense. They seem really dense on the shore because they are concentrated in a thin strand line up on the beach whereas when they are living out in the ocean, they have lots of room to spread out in lower density populations. However, high densities of the creatures have also been reported out at sea at times when their populations are at their peak," he wrote in an email response to a query.

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"The common name of Velella velella is 'by-the-wind sailor.' Some people call them jellyfish, but they are in fact only distantly related and only superficially similar. Velella belongs to a large group of animals known as siphonophores. In contrast, true jellyfish (scyphozoans) are related to corals that make coral reefs, and to sea anemones. The Velella is about as closely related to jellyfish as we are to birds, that is, not particularly closely. A jellyfish is a single, solitary individual organism. Velella is, in spite of its remarkable appearance as a working individual, actually a colony of individuals all of which work together to make up a kind of 'superorganism,'

"Some are for feeding, some are for defense (containing small stinging structures), some are for reproduction, and some make up the little sail that pokes up above the rest of the flattened, elongate disk that makes up the rest of the body. The polyps are connected by a canal system so they can share food and other important substances. Think of the whole colony as being the shape of the insole of a shoe with a low, thin sail sticking up and running along the length of the center of the insole on the upper side. The whole thing floats with the sail part sticking up and the insole part sitting on the ocean surface. From the bottom of the insole, there are specialized polyps used to collect food, and make sure the whole shebang is supplied with oxygen absorbed from the seawater, etc. The bottom of the 'insole' is really where all the living action is, because it's from the bottom surface that the little tentacles and other special polyps hang down into the water for food gathering and other major functions," Mooi wrote.

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http://www.mercurynews.com/pacifica/ci_26281470/velella-velella-pacifica-shores-what-does-it-mean


(Image source)

Saw a bunch of these things on the beach yesterday - pretty fascinating critters...

[KamaAina]

1. Are they tasty?

They'd certainly make an interesting presentation. They might help make up for the loss of Drake's Bay Oyster Co.

[petronius]

3. I noticed that, despite the abundance, the vultures preferred a week-old sea lion

carcass to gnaw at. I didn't take that as a culinary vote of confidence.

But I might be out there again tomorrow, so I'll see if I can trick some random stranger into believing they're sushi and see what happens...

[xfundy]

2. I first read your header

as "Velveeta, Velveeta, on Pacifica shores..." and had a mental image of the beach polluted with that orangey goo.

Nature is wild!

[petronius]

4. That's not gonna do much good for my dreams tonight...