The PHYSALIA Project continues its mission to understand the complex navigation patterns of the Portuguese Man O’ War. In this new 2026 campaign, our research team is deploying cutting-edge technology in Canarian waters to monitor this species—whose extreme fragility prevents the use of direct on-body sensors.
Key Actions of the 2026 Campaign
- Drone Monitoring: We are performing high-resolution tracking to determine navigation trajectories, recording position, sail orientation, and colony behavior.
- Oceanographic Sensors: We utilize specialized buoys equipped with wind and current sensors to analyze the physical mechanics driving their movement across the ocean.
- Statistical Rigor: Moving beyond historical studies (some dating back 70 years which only analyzed two specimens), our team monitors 11 specimens per outing, ensuring the statistical replicability of our observations.
- Predictive Modeling: The data collected will feed Agent-Based Models (ABM) in a “virtual ocean,” combining biological variables with wind and current data to simulate population dynamics.
“The tracking we are performing in this campaign is vital for understanding how they move and at what speeds. This will allow us to develop prediction models to foresee when and exactly where they will reach our coastlines.” — May Gómez, Lead Researcher.
Interdisciplinary Science for Coastal Safety
This joint effort by oceanographers, evolutionary ecologists, engineers, and modelers aims to shed light on a little-known species while providing scientific tools to improve beach safety and the management of our marine biodiversity.
Project Details The “Evolution of Biological Sailing Navigation” project (PHYSALIA) is funded by the State Research Agency (Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities) and will run until August 2027. It features a collaborative team from the University of Oviedo, the Gijón Oceanographic Center, and the Institute of Marine Sciences of Andalusia (ICMAN-CSIC), with support from the REDPROMAR sighting network.