Austin had to choose a sea creature for his oral report this term. I was sure he would be set on doing the shark or whale or something really boring and predictable. I was so happy when he agreed with my suggestion of the Portuguese Man of War, or Blue Bottle.
My interest in this creature started when I was about 13 years old. During a family vacation in Florida, I was stung on my foot. I wasn't that far out in the ocean when suddenly I felt like someone had put a lit cigarette between my toes. I was screaming and crying. My parents came to see what was happening and carried me up to the lifeguard station. They poured cold water on it and put ice on it to try and relieve the pain. I couldn't walk on it at all. All I remember is going back to the condo and soaking it in a cold bath tub for a long time. Later that night we went to a movie and I was still limping, but by the next day it was back to normal.
Blue Bottles on the Gold Coast, Jan 2007
I never knew what this creature really looked like until I looked it up in an Encyclopedia a few years later. What an odd thing it is! It's actually a number of organisms that work together as a unit. It attacks small fish and other ocean creatures with its tentacles and injects a poison similar to a python. It then digests the fish with one of its mouths which can increase up to 20 times its size in order to envelope the prey. Thank goodness I still have my toes!
The photo above was taken in January of this year here on the Gold Coast. The following is part of an article written about the blue bottles that hit the coast in record numbers.
"Sailing ashore on blustery northeast winds, vast armadas of half-foot-long bluebottle jellyfish took Australia’s Gold Coast beaches by storm this year. The smaller, electric-blue cousin of the Portuguese man-o’-war (both species are technically polyps) commonly blows in to southern beaches during the summer months—November to February, Down Under—in dense packs. But seldom have they arrived in such nettlesome droves: In a single January weekend, Queensland lifeguards treated 600 stings, a stunning increase over the 476 stings recorded for that entire month in 2006 (though painful, stings are almost never deadly). It’s unclear whether there has been a population spike among the sail-shaped, gelatinous invertebrates or if the wind patterns are simply bringing more of them ashore, says Lisa-Ann Gershwin, a jellyfish expert at James Cook University in Queensland. “They live way out in the central gyres in the middle of the great oceans,” she explains, “but so far nobody’s bothered to go out there and count them.” —Tom Colligan. Photogaph by Belinda Curley
It's been fun to work on Austin's report with him and find out more about this strange creature. I love that he enjoys researching it with me. He has to write a page each on its appearance, habitat, diet, etc. as well as draw pictures, and print pictures to include in the report.
6 comments:
I watched a cool show about Irukandji, those tiny 1/2 inch long box jellyfish--nasty little suckers. Why is it Australia has like ALL the world's nastiest creatures? I'd like to see his picture(s) as well.
Those are the funkiest creatures. I've never seen them before. I just got updated on your blog. I thought maybe you had changed to a password protected and I couldn't acess your blog anymore. Anyway, I like the idea of the work you are doing from home and I love what you are doing for RS. I hope you are having a great week!
Oh, if you are an aerobics fan, I like the Power Jam videos from beachbody.com. I love high-impact aerobics, and this particular style is the same one I did when I went to the night-time intramural aerobics when I lived in Provo. I loved it.
Wow, Austin's school assignment sounds really interesting. It will be fun to see his pictures. I must be way out of it when it comes to school, but that sounds really advanced for a 1st grader. He must be a genius!
I remember when you got stung (I thought you were younger than 13) and how sad that was. There were jelly fish all over the beach down there, they looked like little blue balloons.
That photo on the beach there in January was really gross. They do look like bottles on the one end. I think I'd never go into the ocean knowing they were there. Yuk.
Lucas got stung by one of those in South Carolina! It was kind of scary how much it hurt him. We thought it was a jellyfish, until we told our home teacher about it (he is a marine biologist). He said it had to be a man of war. Cool photos!
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