Whaddaf__kisdat?

[Richard Mason]

Originally Posted by Richard Mason;664368 in Chepstow thread

Actually, just got back from there. Dived right in front of the Candlestick, that's the thinner stack between the fat ones. Had a wonderful dive, my Swiss bud. took lotsa photos. Including one of the weirdest "whaddafuckisdat?" creatures I've ever seen. If I saw this thing on a "Extraterrestrial Life Found." programme, I wouldn't be surprised.

Did not have a clue what it is/was and neither had he and he's a First Year Marine Sciences student. We did later find out what they were but I've forgotten already.

OK, here's the "whaddafuckisdat". (the white thing, not the yellow & blue thing - that's me). I now understand that it's a pelagic colonial (or communal) seasquirt. The white tissue was crisscrossed with tiny cavities, on a grid pattern, each of which contained a wee beastie. These things are normally found way out in the Pacific and can grow from 10-20M in length, so big, that a diver can actually enter and swim around inside. Believe it or not, these things are technically plankton.

Tasmania sticks out into deep water, so a lot of oceanic creatures, like whales and giant squid run aground here.





This shot shows a pair of salps; we normally see these as chains of 10-20 individuals but something had evidently broken these things apart.



We saw many of these in the plankton bloom in Oct-Dec, but those were much smaller, a chain of individuals being only 150mm or so long and almost completely translucent.


Edit: I've just found out that the creature fraudulently claimed by Frosty (below) as one of his discarded French Ticklers (no doubt thrown away because it was uncomfortably tight eh Frosty?), is in fact a Pyrosome.

Found some info on them here:

Mar-Eco - Unusual sampler catches unusual creatures

If you scroll down to the end, there's a close up of the little critters which comprise the colony.

[sexydivebuddy]

[B]

Really interesting, never seen it before, thank you for sharing that..

B x

[frosty the snowman]

Note to self. Stop flushing condoms down the loo. They end up in Tasmania.

[Richard Mason]

Originally Posted by sexydivebuddy

what strange creatures! had no idea things like that existed!
if divers can swim through the big squirts, is there any risk that the critters can somehow "envelope" around kit accidently?
do you know what predates them? just curious!

No danger of being swallowed u, the tissue of the beastie (a pyrosome) felt quite soft, I had to handle it very gently, I found it twisted up under the kelp, thought it was a piece of plastic at first.

Maybe turtles would eat them, they certainly eat other salps.

This site has some movie footage,

OceanFootage.com: Stock Footage - Video, Film, High Definition, Underwater Ocean Collection

NZ19_104 is a pyrosome, pretty similar to the one we saw.

EK02_108 & 106 are salps very similar, but larger than the ones we saw in the plankton bloom back in Nov-Dec.

EK02_102 is a comb jelly which is identical to one which has been very common this year.

For some reason, playing more than a few of these movies crashes Mozilla Firefox, although it doesnb't cause any problems getting back in.

Interesting thing is that in 15 years, on & off diving in Tas, this is the first year I've seen any of these.