Velella velella, also known as by-the-wind sailors, are floating tentacled creatures no larger than a teacup — and they’re washing up by the thousands along Bay Area beaches.
Each by-the-wind sailor is actually a colony of polyps, or soft-bodied organisms that use stinging tentacles to immobilize and capture their prey, explained Christina Piotrowski, senior collections manager of invertebrate zoology at the California Academy of Sciences.
The sails that give them their names are flexible but strong, helping to stabilize them on the water since they cannot right themselves once overturned during high winds and churning swells, Piotrowski said. Each sail can be oriented to the left or right, with most by-the-wind sailors being “lefties.
A by-the-wind sailor is captured and studied by scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Greater Farallones and Cordell Bank national marine sanctuaries and Point Blue Conservation Science during an at-sea monitoring cruise.While by-the-wind sailors can be cool to look at, experts say it’s best to simply leave them alone if you encounter them. Their stings are virtually harmless to humans and pets but can cause some irritation to the skin.
And if you see them wash up on a beach near you, don’t be alarmed. Steven Haddock, a marine biologist for the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute who runs, a website dedicated to tracking sightings of jellyfish and related species, said the number of by-the-wind sailors that wash ashore can be very high, reaching the trillions. It’s not at all out of the ordinary, he said — it’s just the nature of their complex life cycle.
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