By-the-wind sailor

Its floating colonies are mirror images of each other, either 'left-handed' or 'right-handed', and this affects where they drift. In the northern Pacific, one form tends to drift to North America and the other to eastern Asia, such as Japan.1

Each blue 'animal' with a sail is really a colony of linked polyps that share food through a canal system.1

Each colony is either all male or all female.1

Its sail is not a fin. It works like a sail, so the animal tends to drift downwind at a small angle to the wind.1

Its tiny jellyfish carry zooxanthellae, single-celled organisms that use sunlight to provide energy, a feature also found in corals.1

It has no means of moving other than its sail, so it depends on prevailing winds, and mass strandings on beaches happen in many parts of the world.1