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More Portuguese man-of-war sightings on South Coast
June 30, 2006
WESTPORT, Mass. --A slew of Portuguese man-of-war sightings along the shores
of Buzzards Bay on Thursday were likely brought to the area by eddies broken
off from the Gulf Stream, a marine life expert says.
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The sightings come just days after a Westport man spent the night in the
hospital after being stung repeatedly by the jellyfish-like creatures that
are relatively rare off the coast of Massachusetts because they are usually
found in warmer waters.
"What has probably happened is that a group of them congregated in the Gulf
Stream and an eddy spun off -- they can be 50 miles wide -- and that column
of warm water and the wind carried a whole little cluster in our direction,"
Ed Enos, superintendent of the Aquatic Resources Division at the Marine
Biological Laboratories in Woods Hole, told the Standard-Times of New
Bedford.
Readers called the newspaper on Thursday to report sightings in the waters
off Westport, Dartmouth, New Bedford, Fairhaven and Mattapoisett.
No beach closures have been reported because of a Portuguese man-of-war.
"I haven't seen them here in 10 years," Enos said.
The Portuguese man-of-war, also known as a bluebottle, is a jellyfish-like
organism that is actually a floating colony of polyps. The organism, with a
balloon-like sail propelled by the winds, trails tentacles sometimes up to
30 or 40 feet long that sting when touched. The stings deliver a neurotoxin
that can be extremely painful, Enos said.
Raymond Cabral of Mattapoisett encountered a cluster of them Thursday
morning when he was surfing off Little Compton, R.I. "When you look at them
they are kind of pretty," Cabral said. "It looks like a boat with a
spinnaker up. They are all over ... bobbing and weaving in the surf. All of
us surfers have been stung by them, but you really try to avoid them."
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