Millions of Bright Blue Blobs Called ‘By-the-Wind Sailors’ Are Littering Beaches Along the West Coast
The strange creatures are washing up on shores across California, Oregon and Washington this spring—and making the coast smell especially fishy
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Millions of squishy, bright blue blobs are washing ashore along the Pacific coast, creating a striking spectacle—and a pungent smell—on beaches in California, Oregon and Washington.
The alien-looking animals are “by-the-wind sailors” (Velella velella), oval-shaped creatures around four inches long with tentacles hanging from their bottoms. They get their name from the sail-like fins protruding from the tops of their bodies, which they use to catch breezes and drift along the ocean surface.
The blue-purple critters appear near Pacific coast beaches each spring but usually only make headlines when environmental conditions align to drive them ashore in huge numbers.
“They wash ashore en masse, because that’s sort of how they move around in the ocean,” Chrissy Piotrowski, senior collections manager of invertebrate zoology at the California Academy of Sciences, tells SFGate’s Gillian Mohney. “So, you’ll see large blooms and mass strandings.”
This year, so many by-the-wind sailors are littering San Francisco Bay Area shores that “beaches in this area appear blue from a distance,” Jackie Sones, research coordinator for the University of California, Davis’ Bodega Marine Reserve, tells KQED’s Danielle Venton.
By-the-wind sailors may look like jellyfish, but they’re a type of zooplankton. Like their cousin, the Portuguese man o’ war, each by-the-wind sailor is made up of thousands of genetically identical organisms called “zooids” that perform specific tasks. Some zooids are responsible for stinging prey, often planktonic crustaceans, while others help digest food or reproduce.
Did you know? A jellyfish relative
By-the-wind sailors are distantly related to jellyfish. They’re in the same phylum—a broad category of animals—called Cnidaria, along with sea anemones and corals.
The strange creatures also serve as a food source for numerous marine creatures, including fish, sea slugs, sea turtles and snails. “We’ve observed Mola mola, which is the ocean sunfish, pulling up to these big Velella blooms and just popping them like candy,” Anya Štajner, an ecologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, tells National Geographic’s Melissa Hobson.
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Because they’re at the mercy of the wind and can’t control where they end up, by-the-wind sailors sometimes end up stranded on the beach. Strandings usually happen in the spring, when winds along the Pacific coast blow from west to east. They also tend to occur when ocean temperatures are higher than normal.
This year, the numbers could be affected by a possible El Niño, which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts is likely to emerge soon. This naturally occurring climate pattern typically causes warmer-than-normal water off the West Coast.
Scientists also suspect climate change may also play a role in the mass strandings, per National Geographic. They believe mild, calm winters may be a boon to by-the-wind sailors, so more of them end up littering the beach come spring.
On land, by-the-wind sailors are largely harmless, although they can create slippery walking surfaces. Beachgoers are advised to keep pets and toddlers away from the creatures, since they can cause mouth and eye irritation, among other issues, reports the Santa Barbara Independent’s Elaine Sanders.
“If your dog eats a lot of them, it’ll get an upset stomach,” Jim Burke, director of animal care at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, tells KLCC’s Julia Boboc. “They’re not poisonous, but sometimes they eat more than they want.”
After they wash ashore, by-the-wind sailors start to decompose, a process that fills the air with a stinky, fishy odor. Eventually, their vibrant blue hue fades away, and they dry out to the consistency of a crunchy potato chip.
“Within a couple weeks, they will probably be desiccated and just blow away, like a piece of rice paper,” Steven Haddock, a marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, tells the New York Times’ Sonia A. Rao.
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