Any marine biologists handy? Question for you...

OK - so I just talked to a friend of mine who's a marine biologist about the wierd looking transparent chains I saw recently at that south-facing beach which shall remain unnamed. ;-) I heard other divers calling them jellyfish eggs, but that just didn't sound right to me. Turns out they were short salp chains. He's guessing they were brought in by the same gyres from the Gulf Stream that are bringing in the tropicals. There were TONS of them - the top layer near shore was about 4-6" deep with 'em.

So I've googled them a little (my friend left, so I can't ask him directly)...they're tunicates that eat phytoplankton. So my question is...if they eat phytoplankton, will they eat the algae that usually bloom in our warm waters towards the end of summer? Now that the salp are here, are we potentially looking at much better vis (at least in terms of algae bloom)? Kind of like the way zebra mussels have cleared the vis in the Great Lakes?

That would be fantastic...I wouldn't even mind rinsing them off my gear if they'll run around eating up all the algae and we could get some decent vis out of them...

Salps are filter feeders, but don't get your hopes up. What you are likely seeing is a chance event (e.g., a warm core ring that spun into shore) not a bunch of salps that are taking up residence or that will survive very long.

Ah - I knew it was too good to be true. ;-) Thanks. It was pretty cool to see them and I'm glad I'm learning more about them now that I know what they were....

I agree with Thallassamania, they probably won't do much for vis, they aren't normally numerous enough to have that kind of zebra mussel-like effect on our coastal waters.

Interstingly, if you get further off the RI coast during the summer they are actually pretty common. I see them all the time hanging on my safety stops at wrecks like the U853 etc.

A lot of people were getting their hopes up about menhaden having the same sort of effect in the Bay but there isn't much validity to that either.

That makes sense - my friend said they're much more common out near Block Island than inshore. I've not done the U-boat - so I haven't had any contact with them before. They're definitely very interesting looking. So how long do the chains get out by the U-boat? I've heard of salp chains in other places being 6 feet long - but I can't imagine these getting that long - they were *so* fragile - I didn't see anything over 4-6" - 'course that could easily have been because they were broken up by the waves and rocks inshore... I'm really fascinated by these things...

You're right, they don't get that big here. The ones I've seen were probably 12 inches at the longest and usually less than that. They tend to be near the surface and they can get pretty thick. It definitely makes that 15 ft stop a little less boring.

I tried taking a picture of some when I was hanging out at 15 ft on the line after diving the Troydon last summer but unfortunately the camera didn't do a great job focusing in on them.... still if you look closely you can see some blurry UFOs (underwater floating objects) that were some good sized Salp chains (and yes the water really was that blue out there that day ). I also saw a bunch out on the 853 this last Sunday.

RIOceanographer:

UFOs (underwater floating objects)

Click to expand...

liked the acronym

Some Biologist at Divers Cove in Essex has posted a request that anyone who spots a chain like jelly fish to contact her immediately. She did post a picture that looked like hexagons or something similar chained together.

Im wondering if this is the sought out jellyfish.

Here is one of my "Dive Dry with Dr. Bill" newspaper columns on a species of salp we see here off southern California:

Star Thrower Educational Multimedia (S.T.E.M.) Dive Dry Column

Dr. Bill

Dr. Bill,
Awesome pictures!

I have to go back and remove that fuzzy picture I posted earlier to avoid the shame of comparison!