Bluebottles

A few weeks ago we had big sea storms and when I walked Toby on the beach I found Bluebottles - the first of these infamous Australian nuisances that I've seen. They're reknowned for affecting paddlers and surfers and in 'the season' many beaches are closed. In severe cases of stinging people have died, but for most people an encounter with a Bluebottle ends up in excruciating pain and nasty scars...


For the first day or two I only found small numbers of tiny Bluebottles, but then I went down one morning and the high-tide mark was just covered in thousands of them, some of them a good 6 inches long although that isn't their maximum size.

Strictly speaking Bluebottles (Physalia Physalis) aren't jellyfish but Siphonophores, colonies of polyps and medusoids. They have a translucent 'float' which is tinged blue around the edges and gives its common name, but they're actually a type of Portuguese Man o'War. Larger Bluebottles trail strings of stinging cells over a metre long in the water, trapping small fish and crustaceans, but these small examples only had strings of about a foot long.














I found it all quite eerie and was glad that - owing to the storms and the general state of the weather - I'd elected to wear my wellies on the beach! When I found large masses of them, some quite fresh, I was worried Toby might tread on some stings and be badly affected but he was oblivious to the danger and I think I would have known about it if he'd been stung...