A specimen of the world’s most dangerous jellyfish species has washed up on a beach in Menorca, Mallorca’s neighbouring island. The Portuguese man-of-war was found on Cala en Porter beach, which belongs to the municipality of Alaior. The beachgoer initially buried the creature, which is actually only found in the open Atlantic, in the sand. Lifeguards later retrieved it, cordoned off a large area and waited for local police to take care of it.
Touching the mollusc can cause permanent scars and, in extreme cases, even lead to death in people with allergies. The tentacles are treacherous and can sometimes injure you even when you are not looking at the creature. However, it has an intense poisonous colour in purple, blue and pink.
In recent years, Portuguese man-of-war have repeatedly caused individual beaches in Mallorca to be closed, but they soon disappeared again as they cannot tolerate the warm waters of the Mediterranean. The Portuguese man o’ war is a carnivore. Using its venomous tentacles, it traps and paralyzes its prey while reeling it inwards to its digestive polyps. It typically feeds on small fish, molluscs, shrimp and other small crustaceans, and zooplankton.
The organism has few predators; one example is the loggerhead sea turtle, which feeds on the Portuguese man o’ war as a common part of its diet. The turtle’s skin, including that of its tongue and throat, is too thick for the stings to penetrate. The blue sea slug (aka blue dragon) also specializes in feeding on the Portuguese man o’ war, as does the violet sea snail. The ocean sunfish’s diet, once thought to consist mainly of jellyfish, has been found to include many species, including the Portuguese man o’ war.
The man-of-war fish, Nomeus gronovii, is a driftfish native to the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. It is notable for its ability to live within the deadly tentacles of the Portuguese man o’ war, upon whose tentacles and gonads it feeds. Rather than using mucus to prevent nematocysts from firing, as is seen in some of the clownfish sheltering among sea anemones, the man-of-war fish appears to use highly agile swimming to physically avoid tentacles.
The fish has a very high number of vertebrae , which may add to its agility and primarily uses its pectoral fins for swimming—a feature of fish that specialize in maneuvering tight spaces. It also has a complex skin design and at least one antibody to the man o’ war’s toxins. Although the fish seems to be 10 times more resistant to the toxin than other fish, it can be stung by the dactylozooides (large tentacles), which it actively avoids. The smaller gonozooids do not seem to sting the fish and the fish is reported to frequently nibble on these tentacles.