Portuguese man o'war

OK, we're walking along our favorite beach in the Keys and we come across this jelly fish looking thing in the sea weeds. So I pick several of them up and tossed them back out into the ocean but the wind just blows them back in again.

There are a lot of them along the shore line. Some only an inch long but others 6 to 10" long. If you accidentally step on them they pop and make a bang just like plastic bubble wrap.

Later we had a nature walk with a park ranger and he told us they were Portuguese man o'war and if I had touched the tentacles when I was picking them up I would have received a sting similar to that of a wasp. He also told us that they weren't really jelly fish. They were composed of three independent creatures (the jelly fish is all one) and that these creatures work together to survive. One does the tentacles to stun the fish, one digests the fish and I forgot what the third did. Here's a photo of one we took from our kayaks.

I mentioned that this was our favorite beach - well it should be since it's named for the Currys. This Curry gave the state the initial land for the park. She's 103 years old now and still comes around to check up on it.