By the wind sailors
It was meant to be the adventure of a lifetime – off to sail the seven seas, but tragically the adventure turned into a nightmare for these By-The-Wind Sailors who were ironically caught by-the-wind and washed up in Botany Bay.
By-The-Wind Sailors are one of the oceans most bizarre lifeforms – they are actually a colony of individual polyps or zooids that group together to form ‘sailboats’. These ‘sailboats’ are destined to sail in opposite directions – some are permanently on a port tack with their sail on the right side and the rest are on a starboard tack with their sail on the left.
They float around in ‘Blue Armadas’, often in their tens of thousands until the wind blows for too long in the wrong direction. If their sail is set to the right side they float safely off to sea, if it’s set to the wrong side, they wash up on the beach and perish.