Sea lizards found in Cudgera Creek

Glauca sea lizards feast on bluebottle stingers and then can use the sting as an offensive or defensive weapon.

Courtesy Tim Jack Adams

TINY sea lizards that feast on blue bottles have been found in Cudgera Creek.

The metallic blue creatures, called glaucas, often wash up on beaches with blue bottles and may be mistaken for jellyfish themselves, but they are a type of nudibranch sea lizard, which feast on the blue stingers.

Tim Jack Adams, director of Watersports Guru, saw the creatures alive for the first time last week at Hastings Point while on a snorkelling expedition with a group of students.

“This is the first time I have seen them alive on the coast, it is really amazing,” Mr Adams said.

“These really are some of the most incredible creatures I had ever seen.”

“You wouldn’t know what they were until you saw them alive and studied them.”

Mr Adams said he was stoked to have found the creatures while he was with the kids, as they got an opportunity to study them.

Ted Brambleby, of the Marine Environments Field Study and Resource Centre Hastings Point, said the glauca was a special breed of nudibranch which floated on the ocean film and lived with the blue bottle.

“It feeds on the blue bottle’s tentacles capturing in the process un-discharged nematocysts (stinging cells) and incorporates them into one or more of the many cul-de-sac-like branches of their intestines,” Mr Brambleby said.

“These branches extend out into finger like growths that not only enable the sea lizard to float but can be used as a means to discharge the pirateered blue bottle stinging cells for its own offence or defence.

“The tentacles of the blue bottle regenerate itself after ingestion by the sea lizard.”