Portugese Man O' War and Other Flotsam

Grayton Beach is just about the whitest and finest beach we've every experienced, or heard about: it does not get much better. The beach is usually very clean and free of flotsam, weeds, shells, or garbage. Most times you'll just find these sea gulls, sunning themselves.

Occasionally, you can find sea weeds and for the last day or two, the purple flag was flying due to Portuguese Man O' War in the water and on the beach. You can read all about these interesting but dangerous creatures here. You really don't want to get stung by their tentacles; it's very painful, I know from experience decades ago.

But first, here's a surface sea snail that actually feeds on the Portuguese Man O' War, and we have a shell for our collection. You can read all about it here. I was mistaken in thinking that the foam spewing from the shell was a form of egg casing: wrong! It's actually a raft to allow the snail to float on the surface of the sea where the Man O' War and other scrumptious delights are to be found. It's really quite a nice shell, this one about the size of a nickel.

Also found on the beach were these limpets [at least that's what I think they are called] attached to the sea weed. This sea weed is actually sargassum and you can read all about the sargasso sea in the middle of the Bermuda triangle here. [at the end of this entry, one could have a lot of new factoids to impress people easily impressed at the next party...]

Back to the main event: Portuguese Man O' War. Here's one floating on the incoming tide. Since they can not control their own propulsion, an incoming tide means they are doomed. Pity the swimmer who disregards the purple flag and gets stung.

Here it is close and personal. If you read the wikipedia entry, you know that this animal is actually four separate beings. During their ride to shore, some parts get separated from the rest, so not all the Man O' War that land are complete. This next one seems to have lost its tentacles, the dangerous part.

The next one has some of its tentacles that can be over ten feet long. Swimmers beware!

Sometimes the tide does wonderful things with these tentacles, I thought these two samples were interesting.

Of course, tides and wind do their thing and the beach can get quite littered with these menaces: their sting potency lasts a few days, even when dead and dry.

And now, a quick question for the grandkids [if they got this far]. Click on the picture to see a larger version if you like.What is this in the next picture and why is it important to watch where you walk?