I recently came upon this odd creature while I was out paddling. It’a a salp — a pelagic tunicate. It’s in the phylum Chordata, along with all of us vertebrates, but it does not have a backbone. Like all tunicates, it feeds by filtering particles from the water. Most tunicates are benthic (attached to the bottom), but salps are among the few who swim in the wide open seas (in other words, they’re pelagic). It has a gut and reproductive organs, but not a lot of other complex structures. They represent an example of a group of organisms evolving to become simpler. This one is about the size of my hand.
We’ve been having southwesterly winds, warm water, and red tides in Monterey Bay. I don’t usually see salps locally, but this summer they are abundant.
I happened to have my phone with me (I usually don’t), so I snapped a picture.
