Image of blue button

Description:

After Hurricane Dolly made landfall on South Padre Island, I went to Padre Island and Mustang Island to look for any critters that were brought by the hurricane. Among the findings were hundreds of Blue Button, Porpita porpita. I collected a few on the beach that were already dying or dead and losing their beautiful blue color. I took some photos of them under the microscope. Here are some of the better ones. In one of them you can see some microscopic strands sticking out of one of the tentacles. I wonder if they are nematocysts or perhaps hydroids? The photos shown here were taken under a microscope in a lab in Corpus Christi; the map shows the location where the specimens where collected. See more about Porpita at the Biodiversity of the Gulf of Mexico (BioGoMx) database at: http://gulfbase.org/biogomx/biospecies.php?species=Spp-19-0054