California's beaches are getting a visit from the "By-the-Wind Sailors" again—by the millions. The small, electric-blue, jellylike drifters, formally known as Velella velella, have been reported in big numbers along the state's coastline in recent days, with additional sightings off Washington and Oregon, the New York Times reports. Driven by gusty winds that usually carry them across the ocean's surface, the tiny sailors instead end up stranded in thick bands along the sand when the breeze blows just wrong.
They look like jellyfish but are a related species that normally float together in dense mats, feeding on plankton and serving as snacks for sea turtles and sunfish. Marine biologist Steven Haddock of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute says these mass strandings happen every few years and stretch from Baja California to Alaska, and they're nothing to panic about: the creatures are unlikely to sting people who handle them by their clear "sail."
- Douglas McCauley, director of the Benioff Ocean Initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara, tells USA Today that recent aggregations have been unusually dense. "In a lifetime of living and doing marine science in Southern California, I've never seen that many pile up on a beach," he says.
Haddock and other researchers say the creatures, which have a complex life cycle, have been studied for decades but they're still not fully understood. Haddock says there's no point in trying to return the stranded sailors to the ocean, the Times reports. By the time they pile up onshore, he says, they're already nearing the end of their lives. Within weeks, their bright blues fade, leaving behind brittle, translucent husks that crumble and blow away.
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