This publication first appeared in March 2023. I can’t wait to return to the beach.
Walking south along the beach to Los Angeles this weekend, my friend and I were talking about all the arbitrary things that can alter the trajectory of a life, like where you are born or if your parents went to college.
While we walked, we noticed hundreds of small scattered sea creatures such as dark blue flower petals along the edge of the water. Some were as small as the nail of a baby. Others were as large as silver dollars. When we looked closely, we saw that each animal had a flat and blue oval disk for a body, together with a transparent candle.
We gently took the animals stranded to see if they were alive or had some sharp poison, since they looked a lot like jellyfish. When nothing happened, we began to organize them in a line in the wet sand, from small to large. All curved candles in a shallow–shape, and were slightly at the left. They looked like a fleet of ships waiting for the order of a general. Later, we knew that the strange blue albums were called VELELLA VELELLAor by the wind.
Although they look a lot like jellyfish, Velella is more closely related to sea anemones. It is like, a long time ago, a sea anenoma was released from its safe accessory to a rock or at the bottom of the sea, and went to the surface of the ocean. Somewhere along the line, the descendants of that anemone decided to make the surface of the burning ocean his home.
Scientists are still debating what Velella is exactly: some think they are an animal, with a tentacted lower part that serves as a single mouth. Other researchers think of them as a consortium: many individual tentacles that work together to find food, travel and reproduce. No matter how they work, VELELLA They have great success, to the point that sometimes they can be a discomfort, carpet the surface of the sea and wash in massive piles during storms.
The species has two reflected shapes, one with the candle at the angle to the left, and another with the candle at the right. The angle of the candle determines which direction animals can travel in relation to the direction of the wind. The sailors at the left angle are more common on the coast of California, for example, probably because the prevailing winds generally move them away from our beaches. But in recent months, fierce winds on land have brought a large number of on land on the ground by the wind.
My friend and I try to imagine having a built body to go to the left or the right, towards destruction or survival. Floating in the open ocean without arms to swim, without legs to kick, without palettes, without motor. Only the wind and the waves that push you helpless through the ocean. Velella Indigo blue pigment provides camouflage and sun protection, but the color began to fade as they dried in our arrangement. Meanwhile, we were burning the sun.
My friend went to the water, greeting me to continue. I immersed myself under a wave. Once I cleaned the salt water from my eyes, I could see what I pointed out: a regatta of navigating the wind that swayed on the surface. They were almost invisible against the blue of the ocean. But there they were, his little tentacles combed water for plankton and fish eggs.
These vleella were heading to the shore, where they would soon be stranded and die. Somewhere in deeper waters, they had expelled innumerable jellyfish, the sexually reproductive form of the animal. The cartoon creatures probably already had thousands of meters deep, making embryos. When they were ready, they looked halfway, half a floor to the surface and made their own life rafts outside the raw ocean, with circular cameras of trapped gas bubbles. Then they would build a thin candle of the chitina wafer, capture the wind and fly through the sea surface at speeds of up to 20 knots.
Suddenly, Velella didn’t seem so helpless, only lucky or unfortunate. Sometimes the wind was in his favor, no longer. A little like us.
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