Salps

Salps... that's what they are. Pelagic colonial tunicates. Ever since our first snorkeling session in the Galapagos, I'd been trying to remember the name of these weird creatures and what they are related to. It was the first thing I looked up when I finally got home & reconnected with the internet.

This is a picture I downloaded from a website (see www.itsnature.org), but they're very similar to the salps we saw around the Galapagos. These strange links of jellyfish-like animals were floating in the water just about everywhere we snorkeled, and washed up on some of the beaches as well. I knew they were some kind of colonial animal, and had a vague memory that I'd recently read about them, but I couldn't quite recall the details. Turns out they're plankton feeders that are found in oceans all over the world, but are especially common in the Southern Ocean (around Antarctica.)

Oddly enough, when I saw the name "salp" I immediately remembered why I'd googled it before the Galapagos trip. I have an addictive word game on my ipod, and when the word "salp" kept turning up on it, I thought "What the heck is a salp?" so I looked it up. Who knew I would soon actually be seeing them!