Thousands of blue blobs blanket Southern California beaches. See the ‘wonder’
Thousands of blue blobs blanketed Southern California beaches after winds carried them ashore.
Velella velellas, or by-the-wind sailors, washed ashore near Oxnard, including around the Channel Islands Harbor and “on Kiddie, Silver Strand, and Hollywood beaches,” Channel Islands Harbor said in an April 16 Facebook post.
Photos shared by the agency show the critters stretching across the beaches.
“That is a lot of velella,” a Facebook user commented.
Another close-up image shows the blue creatures floating on the water’s surface.
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“It is part of the wonder of our beach,” Sean Anderson, an environmental scientist and professor at California State University Channel Islands, told the Ventura County Star of the blobs washing ashore.
The creatures have been spotted up and down the California coast in recent weeks, according to iNaturalist, an online platform for sharing biodiversity information, the Sacramento Bee reported.
The tiny seafarers have been seen along the west coast as far north as Canada and as far south as Mexico, iNaturalist data shows.
Oxnard is about a 60-mile drive northwest from Los Angeles.
What to know about the seafarers
The blobs are not jellyfish but colonies of polyps similar to the Portuguese man-of-war, according to JellyWatch.
But unlike the Portuguese man-of-war, “Velella’s stinging cells are rarely harmful to humans,” according to the National Park Service.
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“These blue jellyfish-like creatures use their translucent, triangular sails to free-float around the ocean,” Point Reyes National Seashore said in a March 2024 Facebook post.
“By-the-wind sailor” is actually “a misnomer for this little animal,” according to NPS.
With the inability to actually use their sail for navigation, NPS said the animals are “at the mercy of the winds as to where they go.”
“Traveling in colonies of hundreds,” the sea animals traverse the “open ocean in search of food with only the wind as its form of movement,” the Aquarium of the Pacific said.
Their blue coloration “likely helps the velella stay camouflaged and protected from the sun’s rays,” Point Reyes National Seashore said.
To capture prey such as plankton, the park said the creatures use their “blue stinging tentacles.”
While the blobs “don’t have many known predators,” the park said they are prey for nudibranchs and purple sea snails.
If there is a shift in breeze, rangers said it “can spell bad news for these little seafarers.”
A wind that is too strong can carry them to the shore, leaving the creatures to die.
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These “wrecks” are more common with “warmer ocean temperatures in the northern California current,” rangers said.
Within a few days of being stranded on the beach, the park said, the seafarers’ “bodies decompose, leaving just their cellophane-like sail and floats.”
This story was originally published April 23, 2025 at 4:26 PM with the headline "Thousands of blue blobs blanket Southern California beaches. See the ‘wonder’."
