These new observation studies will be carried out throughout this week and next, using tracking drones to determine their navigation trajectories and buoys equipped with wind and current sensors to understand the mechanics that drive their movements.
The ECOAQUA University Institute, through the Marine Organism Ecophysiology Group (EOMAR), and the University Institute of Intelligent Systems and Numerical Applications (SIANI) at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC), under the coordination of EOMAR researcher May Gómez, have begun a new campaign this week to observe and track the Portuguese man-of-war (Physalia physalis) in the waters of Gran Canaria with the aim of improving predictions of its arrival on the coast, taking advantage of the arrival of the first specimens on the Canary Islands coastline.
This new campaign, which is being carried out within the framework of the PHYSALIA Project, is a continuation of the research work begun in February last year, in which the Marine Observatory of Asturias also participated, through the Department of Biology of Organisms and Systems of the University of Oviedo (UNIOVI), the Gijón Oceanographic Centre and the Andalusian Institute of Marine Sciences, through the Higher Centre for Scientific Research (ICMAN).
International institutions such as the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso (Chile) and Arizona State University's BiosStation (USA) are also participating in this new scientific monitoring programme.
Image of some specimens of Portuguese man-of-war that have washed up on the coast of Gran Canaria and are currently being studied.
Milestone in cultivation
On this occasion, several specimens were collected from the strandings that arrived on 21 January and 8 February, and these organisms were successfully kept in cultivation for study and observation for just over a month, being fed for the first time in a controlled environment over a large number of days in order to learn about their physiology and biological mechanisms. Last year, during the first campaign of the PHYSALIA Project, they were kept alive in culture for a total of 45 days, an unprecedented achievement in the research of this peculiar and beautiful marine species.
Several researchers involved in the project observe the Portuguese man-of-wars kept for observation in culture tanks.
The observation activities for this new 2026 campaign will take place throughout this week and next week with the aim of using drones to track their navigation trajectories, recording their position, sail orientation and colony behaviour. In addition, buoys equipped with wind and current sensors are being used to understand the mechanics that drive the movements of these frigateboats and how they carry them out.
Eleven specimens on each outing
On each outing, the research team tracks around 11 specimens, a figure that is also unique in the study of the Portuguese man-of-war, ensuring the statistical replicability of their observations. In past research, including a study carried out by a British team more than 70 years ago, only two specimens were analysed.
Research team on one of the trips to track Portuguese man-of-war jellyfish.
In the words of May Gómez, "the tracking we are doing both in this campaign and in last year's is very important because it will allow us to find out how they move, what speed they reach thanks to the wind and how Portuguese man-of-war jellyfish move. This will help us to gain more information about why they reach our coasts and, above all, what is even more significant, thanks to the prediction models that will be obtained after these campaigns, to predict when they will reach the coastlines and at which specific locations.
The project involves an interdisciplinary team of oceanographers, evolutionary ecologists, engineers and modellers, who are making in situ observations of Portuguese man-of-war in the sea and modelling those observations.
The project “Evolution of Biological Sailing”, whose acronym is PHYSALIA, seeks to analyse the navigation patterns of Portuguese man-of-war in order to understand their evolution and, thereby, improve predictions of their arrival on the coast.
In this way, the PHYSALIA project, in addition to identifying the navigation patterns of this species, seeks to shed light on the biology, spatial distribution and mechanisms that determine the seasonality of this organism, whose delicacy does not allow the placement of sensors for its study.
The aim is to contribute scientific knowledge to the study of a species about which very little is known, despite its frequent presence on the Canary Islands' coastline, causing, in some cases, the well-known inconveniences to bathers who visit the beaches every year.
The resulting navigation models will then be combined with other variables such as wind, sea currents, and various biological and allometric scaling parameters to construct agent-based models (ABMs) that simulate the population dynamics of caravels in a virtual ocean.
The project is funded by the Spanish Government's State Research Agency of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and has a completion date of 31 August 2027. It also has the collaboration of the REDPROMAR sightings network. In addition to May Gómez, researchers José Luis Acuña and Fernando González Taboada from the University of Oviedo and the Oceanographic Centre of Gijón, and Laura Prieto from the Andalusian Institute of Marine Sciences are participating as IPs in the various sub-projects.