Asilomar Beach in Pacific Grove, CA

During a trip to the beach with my daughters and a friend, along with her children, we discovered the velella velella. We were on a tiny stretch of the shore closed in on both sides by rocks. We were not sure what they were until I contacted my mother who works at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I sent her a picture and she was able to identify them. There were too many to count. People were using them as decorative accents to their sand castles. We did not touch them because our first instinct was that they were some sort of jellyfish and we were cautious of their sting. You could tell that some had been stranded on the beach longer because they had died and turned clear. We witnessed people on the beach actually picking up the velella velella, bringing them up to their faces and smelling them.