You never see just one

For the past several weeks now, the by-the-wind sailors (Velella velella) have been washing up on local beaches. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one floating on the surface of the sea, which is Velella‘s actual habitat. And when you see one Velella on the beach, all you have to do is take a quick look around and you will see hundreds more.

Here’s one Velella:

In life, the part of Velella that sticks up into the air is completely transparent, as you can see in the photo above. The parts that are at the water line or hang into the water itself are a dark blue color shading towards indigo. The habitat where Velella lives, called the pleuston, has zero shelter from the sun. Velella‘s blue pigments may act as sunscreens, reflecting the dangerous UV radiation that damages DNA in living cells.

A really big Velella is a little longer than the palm of my hand. The ones we saw today were sort of average sized.

You never see just one!

What appear to be bits of white plastic flotsam are actually many dried Velella velella. They fade as they dry, and gradually take on the appearance of potato chips. There is a clear demarcation between the white Velella and the bluer ones behind. The blue ones are still dead, but haven’t been on the beach as long; they probably washed up in the high tide that preceded this morning’s low.

Here’s a closer look at that demarcation between long dead and more recently dead Velella. This was taken from the other side of the pileup as I was returning from the intertidal area. To give you an idea of how these piles are oriented with respect to the water, the ocean would be off to the left.

I was fascinated by the shapes and colors of these corpses as they lay in their windrows on the beach. They made for some spectacular abstract photos. Click on each photo to see a larger version.

Irruptions of Velella like this aren’t an annual event, although we do get some washed onto the beaches every year. They certainly don’t want to be here, but living as they do at the mercy of the currents they don’t have much say in the matter.

For whatever it’s worth, earlier this month NOAA confirmed that an El Niño event has formed and is likely to persist through the winter. El Niño typically brings warmer water up the California coast. Might these swarms of Velella portend a warmer-than usual winter for us? Hmmmm. That’s something to think about. It also makes me wish I were a better oceanographer than I am.