Beautiful but venomous blue dragon sea slugs spotted off Florida beach

Blue dragon sea slugs eat Portguese man o'wars and absorb their venom to use in

their own tentacle-like appendages.(Photo: Photo by Doug Beckers via Wikimedia.

Published under Creative Commons licensing.)

Known officially as Glaucus atlanticus, blue dragon sea slugs are also known as sea swallows or blue angels.

Angelic, though, these creatures are not. Each sea slug has dozens of digits fanning out from their finlike appendages in gradients from gray-white to a flame-blue. And each of those cerata can deliver a painful, sometimes dangerous, sting.

One cause for relief is that the demonic looking slugs only grow to about an inch long.

Brevard County Ocean Rescue chief Eisen Witcher said that several of the creatures were seen in the Cape Canaveral area over the weekend but haven't been spotted since.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/02/23/venomous-blue-dragon-sea-slugs/369186002/