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Blue Button Drifter

Blue Button Drifter

February 21, 2015

Porpita porpita, also called the blue button jelly, floats at or near the surface of the water and drifts with the wind. This flower-like floater, related to jellyfish, is actually a colony, not a single animal. Its blue central disc is filled with a gas that allows the colony to float. The tentacles radiating from the disc are individual polyps specialized to do all the feeding.(Photo by Kelly Rakow Sutherland, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

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