BlueBottle

Description:

The Portuguese Man o' War (Physalia physalis), also known as the Portuguese man-of-war, man-of-war, or bluebottle, is a jelly-like marine invertebrate of the family Physaliidae.

Habitat:

The Portuguese Man o' War lives at the surface of the ocean. The gas-filled bladder, or pneumatophore, remains at the surface, while the rest of the Man o' War stays underwater.[2] Since the Man o' War has no means of propulsion, it is moved by a combination of winds, currents, and tides. Although they can be found anywhere in the open ocean (especially warm water seas), they are most commonly found in the tropical and subtropical regions of the Pacific and Indian oceans, and the northern Atlantic Gulf Stream. The Man o' War has been found as far north as the Bay of Fundy and the Hebrides.[3] In the Mediterranean Sea, the Man o' War was first spotted off the coast of Spain, and then later in Corsica.[4][5] In 2010, sightings of the bluebottle were recorded around the small island of Malta in the Mediterranean.[6] In the summer of 2009, Pembrokeshire County Council warned bathers in its waters that the organisms had been sighted in Welsh waters. In Ireland, there were dozens of confirmed sightings (in 2009-2010), from Termonfeckin in County Louth to the coast of County Antrim [7] On the other side of the Atlantic, they are known to wash ashore all along the northern Gulf of Mexico and east and west coasts of Florida. An abundance of Portuguese Man o' Wars can be found in the waters of Costa Rica, especially in March and April, while they are also found off of Guyana. They wash up on the seashore during certain months of the year. They are reported abundantly in the waters near Karachi, Pakistan in the summer months, and are also common in the ocean off parts of Australia, where they are known more commonly as 'blue-bottles', and New Zealand. During these months, they are also found to come ashore in the Gulf of California after rain, where they are known as agua(s) mala(s) by locals.[citation needed] They are also frequently found along the east coast of South Africa, (particularly during winter storms if the wind has been blowing steadily on shore for a number of hours), as well as around the Hawaiian Islands.

Notes:

Despite its outward appearance, the Man o' War is not a true jellyfish but a siphonophore, which differ from jellyfish in that they are not actually a single creature, but a colonial organism made up of many minute individuals called zooids.[1] Each of these zooids is highly-specialized and, although structurally similar to other solitary animals, are attached to each other and physiologically integrated to the extent that they are incapable of independent survival.