Beach combers along the Oregon coast have been coming across hundreds of curious creatures washed ashore.
At first glance, these gelatinous tubes don’t look like animals. They are translucent and bumpy. Some people refer to them as “sea pickles.” But they’re actually pyrosomes.
Pyrosomes are free-floating colonial tunicates that usually live in the upper layers of the open ocean in warm seas, although sometimes they’re found at greater depths. THey are made up of hundreds to thousands of individuals, known as zooids.
Courtney Klug works at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport. She said pyrosomes can reach over 50 feet in length but the colonies landing on beaches from Florence to Lincoln City are usually a couple feet long.
“They’re quite mysterious,” she said. “We don’t know much about the lives of these animals. And we don’t know whether their increased presence on our beaches is indicative of changing ocean conditions-- or not. We just know that winter storms and powerful tides often bring in a greater amount of these animals.”
Klug can’t say if the recent underwater volcanic eruption in Tonga is the reason for so many pyrosomes washing up dead on the Oregon coastline. But it’s possible more will appear throughout the winter.
