Bluebottles in the Bay – a sign of things to come?
March 2, 2010 by BayKeeper
Filed under Wild Things
The recent discovery of Bluebottle jellyfish on Portsea back beach and Bellarine front beach received a low key response in Melbourne mainstream media. Despite a fearful reputation that routinely causes closure of Queensland beaches, a web search revealed that the editors of ‘Adelaide Now’ seemed more interested.
Bluebottle pictured on Wollongong Beach by Fiona Wilkinson
Also known as ‘Stingers’ and ‘Portuguese Man o’ War’ (or Physalia physalis), these other-worldly creatures are an amazing partnership of four different co-existing organisms, each with a specialised function. Fiona Wilkinson’s pic above shows the Bluebottle ‘float’ which can sit up to 150mm above the ocean surface. What it doesn’t show is the fine tentacles, commonly 10m long, which trail below the surface and paralyse prey with their sting.
Bluebottles live on the ocean surface and are moved about by wind, tide and currents. In January 2010 Bluebottles were reported to be swarming near Queensland beaches; and by February they had been found as far south as Wynyard in Tasmania.
Bluebottles were found on the Backbeach at Sorrento last weekend, having arrived there mid week.
Numbers were not high, but we found approx 500 hundred along the beach on a clean up last Sunday morning 28 Feb 2010.
I didn’t realise bluebottles were uncommon down here in Melbourne when I saw a whole bunch of em on the Mornington penisula the other week. Have there been any blue sea slugs around? When I was up on Moreton Island over the New Year break there were plenty of blue sea slugs/glaucas atlanticus washed up on the shore along with bluebottles – amazing looking things. The slugs are apparently their predators, even storing the venom from the bluebottles and other stingers for their own use – their sting is apparently even worse than the bluebottle which I wouldn’t want to experience – my girlfriend got done by a bluebottle while we were there and it took about a month or two for the welts to dissapear.
Nick
Thanks Nick and David for your Bluebottle news. I understand it’s not especially unusual for Bluebottles to turn up on Victorian beaches. They’re carried there by both eastern and western currents. But up till now I’ve not heard of ‘em in the Bay. Has anyone out there seen them on Bay beaches before?
Surprised to find Bluebottles on the North West coast of Tasmania in April this year.