Thanks Trevor, hope it was worth the wait

Stunning! I lived on Van Island for a time, it is near and dear. You caught a lot of lefties from the looks of it thanks for sharing

Thanks for your note! We have an update that I hope answers your question ☺️ bsky.app/profile/iwan...

We have an update! bsky.app/profile/iwan...

Using participatory & traditional science we robustly support Savilov’s hypothesis that a mirrored trait plays a key role in the global distribution of By-the-wind sailor. This will help elucidate patterns in the community of animals floating on our high sea surface

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

But are they really By-the-”WIND”? We looked at the coast of Portugal which experienced episodic strandings of lefties and righties. Under wind conditions where we predict more left- or right-handed sailor strandings, we did in fact observe that, so the wind is the likely culprit. So, altogether...

We used genetics to test whether lefties and righties are members of the same species and/or distinct populations. When comparing lefties and righties that found together on the North Carolina coast & lefties from Monterey Bay California, we found that sail direction came from a mixed population...

Answer this age-old question. Using ~11,000 photos from @inaturalist.bsky.social and 300 samples in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre from two sea-going expeditions, we found proportionally more lefties ashore in the North, more righties in the South, and righties concentrated inside the gyre...

Until the trail ran dry... R. Bieri saw merit in A.I. Savilov’s hypothesis, but because data was scarce (& the high seas are hard to study!) he concluded that the mystery remained. Now decades later, we combined community (citizen) science with advances in genetics and oceanography to...

Savilov thought that in the Northern Hemisphere, left-handed sailors would be blown outside of gyres toward the coastline and right-handed sailors would concentrate inside gyres; the opposite being true in the Southern Hemisphere. Through the 1960s...

By-the-wind sailor are a spiraling mystery. They have a fleshy rigid sail that points to the left or right. Lefties go left and righties go right relative to the wind. This led a Soviet scientist, A.I. Savilov, to predict that sail direction had something to do with their global distribution...

100 years! By-the-wind sailor, or Velella velella, have dazzled and perplexed beachgoers for ages. Their episodic strandings on beaches around the globe bring a high seas mystery and a potpourri of ocean stink, as immortalized in this account from April, 1902 in the journal Nature...

High praise!!! Thanks Marina 🥹

Thanks Jim! It is with radical optimism that we keep poking and prodding at the mysteries of the beautiful blue planet

You can conduct a study on what fresh produce lasts the longest based on meals at sea. Leafy greens quickly give way to lots and lots of cabbage, beets, and potatoes. I am Polish so I was born for it 😅

The sea surface is full of species with names that go hard / are whimsical! Portuguese man-o-war, blue sea dragon... 🤘

Hopefully with fewer comas, evil twins, and rivals coming back from the dead!

Leaving y'all on a bit of a cliff hanger, but we're hoping to share more in a week or so...
bsky.app/profile/iwan...

Dazzling photos of a couple lefty velella!