Salpa maxima: a translucent tunicate (sea life)

[EdEarl]

See: Science is Awesome

 

This Salpa maxima is an amazing translucent tunicate found in subtropical waters, and this individual was found near New Zealand. Some species range all the way down to the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica.

Salps pump water through their barrel-shaped bodies to move while they simultaneously filter feed krill and phytoplankton.

Image via: Stewart Fraser, Cater News

Interesting, they look and move somewhat like jellies, eat like a whale shark, and are shaped like a fish. It is odd enough to be proposed exobiology in a sci-fi book.

Edited January 29, 2014 by EdEarl

[Flexporian]

This is truly amazing, to be almost fully translucent creature. It makes me wonder, what had originally been its ancestral being and form.

Very, Very interesting.

[Moontanman]

I've caught salps in nets before, odd creatures for sure. They are mobile Tunicates, they look like Tunicate larvae in many ways, a great example of neoteny at work. Tunicates are a basil off shoot of chordates. Tunicate larvae resemble primitive fish in many ways, tunicates ie sea squirts are wide spread in the oceans of the world and an important part of the ecosystem.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salp

 

https://sites.google.com/site/chordatestunicatesandlancelets/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunicate

Where I live we have these sedentary colonial tunicates that look a lot like brain coral, they are often brightly colored and colonies are often big as footballs..