The technical name for this condition is gastric (stomach) antral (the end part of the stomach) vascular (blood vessel) ectasia (dilated blood vessels), otherwise known as GAVE syndrome. These bright red streaks arise in the far part of the stomach because of the dilated blood vessels. It is not known why they occur. Slow chronic blood loss is the only problem. There are now ways to coagulate these blood vessels and prevent bleeding. This condition has been called watermelon stomach because the streaky long red areas may (but not always) resemble the markings on watermelon.