In the summer months, north-easterly winds frequently herald the arrival of bluebottles on beaches along Australia’s east coast. But while bluebottles – or to give them their more formal name, the Pacific man-of-war – are a common sight on Australian shores, they are not native to coastal waters. Instead, they spend most of their lives on the open ocean, drifting with the winds and the currents.
Bluebottles are just one of a collection of organisms that have made their home at the ocean’s surface. Some of these animals are hydrozoans like the bluebottle.
