THESE are just a few of the Portuguese Man o’War specimens that have washed up along the Costa del Sol over the past few weeks and months.
Photos shared with the Spanish Eye show the blue and purple creatures strewn across the shores of Sabinillas, Manilva, around a 20-minute drive west from Marbella.
The snaps were taken by Onou Experiences, which warned dog owners to be extra vigilant due to the potency of the Man o’War’s sting, which can kill other animals and even some vulnerable humans.
The sighting, on March 18, is part of a notable surge in jellyfish reports across Spain’s Mediterranean coast and islands.
Although, technically, the Portuguese Man o’War is not a jellyfish, it is actually a siphonophore, which is ‘a colony of specialised animals called zooids that work together as one’, according to Oceana.org.
Regardless, the surge in jellyfish sightings has led the UK Foreign Office to issue a rare ‘purple’ warning to holidaymakers ahead of the high season.
The creatures resemble a ‘large translucent purple float, the crest tipped with pink, and long blueish-violet tentacles’, according to the UK’s Wildlife Trust.
In Tenerife, a yellow flag was recently at Las Teresitas Beach in Santa Cruz after multiple specimens were spotted on the shore.
A rare purple flag was also unfurled for marine fauna, alerting beachgoers to the potential danger.
Macarena Marambio, a researcher at the Institute of Marine Science in Barcelona, told The Guardian last year: ‘The jellyfish are becoming more common and are increasing both their seasonal and regional distribution.
‘Warmer seas aid reproduction and as a result, we’re seeing increasing numbers of the purple barrel jellyfish.’
Her colleague Josep Maria Gili added that there is ‘no short-term solution because it’s about climate. We’ll have to get used to sharing our beaches with jellyfish.’
