This beautiful jellyfish was washed up on Navarre beach. It is best to just enjoy these animals at a distance, they can still sting when they are dead. Normally, the stingers are used to paralyze small fish. This specimen was the size of a dinner plate. The "flower-like" structure is the reproductive parts of the jellyfish, they are pink in males and yellow in females.
During a visit to Navarre Beach in Florida in 2019 my husband and I were surprised to see hundreds of these unusual creatures washed up on the sand. They are animals in the class Hydrozoa, made up of colonies of many individual animals. They float on top of the water catching their prey with dangling tentacles. Their "sails" lean either to the left or the right, this is a left-leaning individual. They are small, only 2 inches long, and (unlike their close relative, the Portuguese-Man-o-War) are harmless.
We were stunned to see thousands of these By-the-Wind-Sailors and a few Portuguese-Man-O-War washed up on Navarre Beach in March 2016!
