Linda Braker was shocked to find the Portuguese man of war washed up on the shore. (Photo courtesy of Linda Braker)
Linda Braker did a double take while walking on the beach in Sea Isle City on Monday afternoon with her husband, George.
Lying in the sand near 45th Street was an alien-looking creature that had a balloon-like body and long, creepy tentacles.
It was a Portuguese man of war, also known as Portuguese man o’ war.
“It looked to be dead. I didn’t get close enough to touch it. I didn’t want to,” Braker, a Sea Isle resident, recalled in an interview Tuesday.
Braker recognized it and knew not to get near the venomous sea creature known for excruciating stings from its tentacles.
“You hear the stories of how painful they are,” she said.
Previously, she had seen many Portuguese men of war in Jupiter Beach, Florida. But never one on the beach in Sea Isle.
She documented the encounter by taking a photo of the creature and posting it on the Facebook forum SIC Chatter for everyone to see.
“People are shocked to see it, just as I was,” Braker said of the reaction from Facebook posters.
Indeed, one poster, Margie Moor Wicks, expressed her surprise with a one-word reply: “Yikes!!”
Another poster, Elaine Morris Woerner, simply wrote, “Bad creature.”
Other posters wrote warnings not to touch the man of war because of their notoriously painful sting.
“I picked one up in Bermuda and the pain is like 1,000,000 knives,” Donna Patrone Scullin exclaimed.
Devin Griffiths, a spokesman for the Wetlands Institute, pictured here, says Portuguese men of war are relatively common at the Jersey Shore miles out to sea. (Photo courtesy of VisitNJ.org)While often associated with places such as Bermuda and other tropical islands, Portuguese men of war are actually rather common along the Jersey Shore, explained Devin Griffiths of the Wetlands Institute near Stone Harbor.
“They do regularly appear in offshore waters in South Jersey,” said Griffiths, who has seen them on trips to the open ocean.
The Wetlands Institute specializes in education, research and conservation of marine life, wildlife and the environment at the shore. Griffiths said the institute had not heard of any other Portuguese men of war spotted on Cape May County’s beaches.
Most of the time, they are lurking far offshore, miles from land, not washed up on the beaches, he noted.
The likelihood that a swimmer would encounter a Portuguese man of war at the Jersey Shore is “pretty small,” Griffiths said.
So how did this one end up on the beach in Sea Isle?
Both Griffiths and Braker surmised that the creature was washed up by the strong winds and unusually high tides at the shore in the last two weeks.
“It looked like it got caught up in seaweed,” Braker said.
Sea Isle spokeswoman Katherine Custer said her office and the city’s Public Works Department have not received any reports of Portuguese men of war on the beaches.
“Public Works will keep an eye out,” Custer said of work crews checking the beaches for possibly any more of the creatures like the one spotted by Linda Braker.
