Photographing Bluebottles (Getting Good Photos For Identification)

Photographing Bluebottles

Physalia

What Must Be In The Photograph ²

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The photos above are not mine but belong to different users here. Unfortunately I took them to show the difference hours before I started to write this guide and have not found the original obs for each one. If the photos are yours, please add in the comments and I will delete then upload it, with your name and the URL, giving proper credit where due :)

There are 4 possible IDs for bluebottles in New Zealand so to get an ID make sure you get good photos of at least the float.

Physalia utriculus (first photo) has a single main fishing tentacle, a float with a high crest in the middle half of the float (as clearly seen in ghte photo) and long, cylindrical, tapering, posterior extension (right hand side). They can also have a bloated float.

Crested Bluebottle - Physalia sp1 (full crest) (second photo) has one single main fishing tentacle, and a prominent crest along the full length of the float which does not stand up high like the Physalia utriculus crest, instead it shows more as "joins" as seen in the sample photo.

Barrel Bluebottle Physalia sp2 (no crest) (third photo) has a single main fishing tentacle and no crest. The float is also smooth without any "joins".

Irukanji Bluebottle - Physalia sp3 (multi-tentacled) (forth photo) which has multiple main fishing tentacles. These are the long ones and we can see in the photo that there are at least 2 long ones.