What is a Portuguese man o’ war and why are they being found on our beaches?

Nova Scotians might want to keep a close watch for a potentially unpleasant visitor on our shores.

This after a 7-year-old girl was stung by a Portuguese man o' war last weekend at Lawrencetown Beach.

Multiple media outlets report the child was in the water when she reached out for what she thought was a floating pair of pink sunglasses.

She was taken to the IWK for treatment and released after a few hours.

“A child getting stung is perhaps a bit more serious than an adult getting stung, but there are very few fatalities related to them,” said retired zoologist Andrew Hebda.

The Portuguese man o' war is related to the jellyfish and also has a painful sting.

However, the creature is actually a colony of four different organisms, called polyps, that work together as one.

The first polyp is the part that floats on the water, the tentacles below the surface are the second polyp, the third is its digestive system, while the fourth handles reproduction.

The tentacles can be up to 40 or 50 metres long, although the average is closer to 9 metres.

“In the dangling tentacles … they have these little barb-like devices that, if you touch the tentacle it essentially shoots the barb into you and it has a very painful neurotoxin,” Hebda told NEWS 95.7's The Sheldon MacLeod Show.

“Now for us, it produces something extremely painful, but for other small invertebrates, more specifically fish, it will paralyze them.”

This isn't the first time the tropical species has been found in our waters. Hebda said there were also reports of Portuguese man o' war in 2006 and 2017. 

“They don't swim, they have that float so they're driven by the wind,” he explained. “So they need warm surface waters moving further north, but the thing that brings them to the shore is the wind.”

“If you think about last week, we had those good, solid, steady winds from the south for roughly three or four days, and that's enough to start moving things inland to the shore.”

He said if there are reports of an occasional one being spotted on a beach, chances are there are several more being blown up all along the coastline.

Like jellyfish, Portuguese man o' war can still sting even after washing up onshore and its bright colours could attract small children.

Hebda added you may also want to watch your pets closely, as your dog may mistake the puffy shape for a fun toy.