Thousands of blue sea creatures, which look a little like jellyfish and sport the unusual name of Velella velellas, have been washing up recently on shores in central California.
The transparent sea invertebrates have a curved sail that sometimes can carry them into shore and leave them stranded. But residents say it’s unusual to see that many live velellas make it to shore.
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“I've seen them in years past up on Bonny Doon, Davenport Beach, but I've never seen them alive before. They're really cute, they just kind of sail out there," Jodi Frediani, a local photographer,
told the San Jose Mercury News of the velellas.
"It's been eight years, plus or minus, that we've seen them," marine biologist Nancy Black told the Mercury News, adding that they used to come in the spring years ago. "Why they've come now, it's hard to say."
Naturalist Kate Cummings told the newspaper she thought warmer water temperatures might have something to do with the velellas' return.
Black, who owns Monterey Bay Whale Watch, said she saw sunfish eating the velellas, something she has never seen in 28 years.
Photos of the Velella velellas appeared all over the Internet.
Stanford lecturer Jim Watanabe said the creatures cannot live out of water.
“If you pick these guys up and put them in the water and look at the under side, (you’ll see) these tiny little tubular polyps and tentacles and other sort of things, which is the living part of the animal,”
Watanabe told SF Gate. “If it isn’t face-down in the water then they can’t make their living — they’ll dry out on [the] beach quickly.”
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