A mysterious animal

  by Bartłomiej Blacha and Karol Danielczyk from Bieruń, Poland

On the third day of our trip to Sicily we went to a very nice beach in Mondello. We put on our swimming costumes and started taking pictures. Suddenly, we saw a strange animal lying on the sand. It was quite small, just a few centimeters long, transparent with some blue elements. We didn’t know what it was. Our teacher warned us: “You’d better not touch this animal, please, be careful”, but it was too late. We had already touched it!

It was a bit jellied and slimy. It didn’t move. We told to our friends: “What a beautiful animal! Does anyone know its name?” Unfortunately, nobody knew it. Until we found out more about the animal, for the time being, we called him “Edek” – in Polish it’s a short version of a name Edward. However, we still wanted to find out the real name of our animal. We asked Italian students about it, but they didn’t know the answer. Then we inquired Italian teachers. They couldn’t help us either. Finally, we started to search for the information amongst other people at the beach. No response again…  Nobody knew what it was! We were wondering why local people didn’t know the animals which lived in the sea!

After all, we decided to search on the Internet. My friend Karol hit on an idea to put ‘a blue sea animal” in the search engine. Edek was there! We were glad that we finally found out its real name. And the name was… Velella velella. But, what is Velella velella? 

http://news.nationalgeographic.com

Velella velella is an animal which typically lives in big groups on the surface in open oceans and seas. It eats plankton and each animal can eat velella. It has a blue disc, which holds air and floats on the surface of the water and a small ‘sail’ above the surface to catch the wind in order to move. It can only be pushed by the force of wind and ocean currents, because it doesn’t have its own means of locomotion except for the sail. Sometimes the wind blows it ashore. That’s why we found Edek at the beach. Unfortunately, when velella is thrown to the sand, it dies after a few hours. We also have learnt that velella isn’t dangerous for people but it can cause some burns. 

http://planktonchronicles.org

We know by now, what swims in the Tyrrhenian Sea near Palermo. We think it’s fascinating and essential to study the environment which surrounds you.