New Friends at the Jersey Shore

Do you know what these are? Some thought they were “fish eggs” and the others called them “jellyfish eggs”.  My friend Tina did the research and found out that they were salps.

 Salps are small filter-feeding organisms which pump water through their body to feed and move.  Unlike jellyfish, they have a spinal cord at some point in their lifetime. They arrived with the warm waters of the Gulf Stream.  Swimming with them felt like moving through a sea filled with elbow macaroni! They stuck in hair and bathing suits but were otherwise harmless.                                                         

What is great about these organisms is that they remove carbon from the water. The carbon exits the system of the salp when it excretes waste (goes “number 2”) and the pellets sink to the sea floor and can stay there for centuries!

 Taking carbon out of the upper water surface of the ocean leaves more room for the carbon in the water and this means less will escape into our atmosphere as carbon dioxide- a notorious global warming gas. Ultimately these little critters are helping the ice caps stay afloat! For this, the polar bears think salps rock!