Thursday, June 22, 2017

Pickle-like Creatures Invade Pacific West Coast

Pyrosome. (NOAA photo)
There's a garden of pickles growing in the Pacific Ocean!

OK, that's not exactly true, but there aren "Millions of tubular sea creatures called pyrosomes (that) have taken over the Pacific Ocean in an unprecedented bloom," reports an Oregon newspaper.

Scientists are baffled and in a pickle trying to explain these pickle-looking sea creatures.


"These bumpy, translucent organisms look like sea cucumbers that range in size from six inches to more than two feet long...

"And they’re everywhere, filling the waters off the West Coast all the way up to Alaska, and washing up on beaches.

"One research boat caught 60,000 of them in five minutes. They’re so thick in Alaska that fishermen gave up on fishing because their hooks were coming up full of pyrosomes instead of salmon."





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