‘Explosion’ Of Stinging Sea ‘Snakes’ Reported All Over Malta
Forget jellyfish for a second – it looks like a cause of concern if you’re going to be swimming around Malta could very well be stinging snakes
Prominent local marine biologist Alan Deidun has taken to Facebook to warn people to beware of what looks like a sea snake but is actually a colony of stinging cells known as a siphonophore.
Regarded as “close relatives of the dreaded Portuguese man o’war”, Deidun explained how, while the sight is usual in Maltese waters over the January to May period, “for some reason, in recent days, there has been an explosion of reports of this species in local waters”.
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And it hasn’t been a localised incident either, with bays as far apart from Ċirkewwa and Mistra to Birżebbuġa and Marsaxlokk reporting sightings of the “snakes”
“The species in question could be Forskalia edwardsii and it can reach a total length of 10 metres,” Deidun continued, sharing a number of photos submitted by his Spot The Jellyfish community’s “army of citizen scientists” including Maria Schembri, Andrew Zammit, Steven Brockwell, Stephen Bugeja and Gabriel Bugelli.
Have you ever seen one of these sea critters out in the wild?
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