Durban – A strange ‘jellybean’ was spotted on a beach by Richards Bay resident Hennie Griessel and while it could easily be taken for a bit of leftover jelly or an alien creature, the South African Association for Marine Biological Research (SAAMBR) has identified it as a “salp”.
Featured on their Facebook page, the organisation said these were “seldom identified creatures”.
“When most people see these “jellybeans” on the beach they don’t give them a second look and presume they are merely pieces of jellyfish.
“They are in fact salps and are more closely related to fish than they are to jellyfish. They are free-floating open ocean creatures with brains, hearts, complex nervous, circulatory and digestive systems that propel themselves through the water in long strings or swarms,” said SAAMBR.
It added that salps are the “fastest growing multicellular animal on Earth”, saying that they can grow to maturity in 48 hours and increase their body length by 10% every hour. They are able to respond very quickly to phytoplankton blooms.
“Salps play an important role in the ocean as they move down through the water filtering plankton for food, excreting and thereby spreading ocean nutrients. In turn, they are fed on by a range of different sized fish including the sunfish.
Next time you are walking along the shoreline and come across what you think is a piece of jellyfish – perhaps stop and take a closer look. Salps are not dangerous to humans.
SAAMBR stimulates community awareness of the marine environment through education and promotes sustainable use of marine resources through scientific investigation.
It operates three divisions:
• The Oceanographic Research Institute (ORI)
• uShaka Sea World
• uShaka Sea World Education Centre
Meanwhile, according to www.itsnature.org, as salps dine on phytoplankton, they move around the seas according to phytoplankton blooms.
When there are many phytoplankton, the salps move into the area and consume them all. The species is so adept and successful when there is plenty of food that they can actually clone themselves and the clones graze upon the phytoplankton, This results in their speed in growing.
Another interesting fact according to itsnature.org is that the salps have to pull the water through their bodies to both eat and move, and so when they are in very dense populations of phytoplankton, they can actually become clogged with their food source and sink.
When this happens it is not uncommon for the beaches to be full of slippery salp bodies that have become clogged and then wash up on to the beaches. In areas with dense phytoplankton populations it is common to see the salp bodies on the beaches, especially during phytoplankton blooms. Because the salps feed off the phytoplankton but can become clogged with them, causing their demise, the two species are always in competition with both of their numbers fluctuating in any given area or period of time.
Independent on Saturday