Throughout the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, there are marine organisms that resemble buckets of snot. These creatures are called salps, and there are more than 70 species of salps all over the world. They are the fastest-growing animals on Earth and have a major impact on the health of the ocean.
The most common species is Salpa fusiformis. Salps can be found within the ocean surface to as deep as 2,600 feet. They are barrel-shaped and grow up to about four inches in adulthood.
They are able to join together to create long chains that drift in the sea, carried by the tides. To synchronize their movements, they communicate through electrical signals.
Salps can also use jet propulsion to move themselves along. They use bands of muscles to pump seawater through their bodies. As the water exits their rear, they are propelled forward, and food is collected.
These features classify them as members of a group called “sea squids.” Because they are soft and transparent, they may seem like jellyfish.
However, salps do not have stinging cells like jellyfish. They mainly feed on phytoplankton and anything else that is small enough to get caught in their feeding net, which is made of sticky mucus.
Salps contribute a lot to the fight against climate change since they are able to filter large volumes of water. At night, salps feed in surface waters and sink deeper down into the ocean during the day, possibly to avoid predators.
Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution estimated that an army of salps across an area of 38,000 square miles can consume up to 74 percent of phytoplankton from the surface water each night. They release fecal pellets that sink into the depths, capturing up to 4,000 tons of CO2 in one night.
The organisms have a complex life cycle. They can reach maturity in just 48 hours when food is abundant. Adult salps go through two different reproductive phases.
dam – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual salps
The first phase involves making thousands of identical copies of themselves, creating huge swarms that spread across the ocean and consume enormous quantities of algae matter. This population consists of all females.
Then, the salps produce eggs that are fertilized by nearby males. The eggs develop internally, and the salps give birth to live offspring.
The newly hatched young will swim off to mature into adults. Eventually, the swarm will transition to a population of all males that fertilize the eggs.
It is believed that salps are the fastest-growing multicellular animal on the planet. They increase their body length by up to 10 percent every hour and reach full maturity in 48 hours.
Salps look about as appealing as snot, but people have described swimming with them as a pleasant experience, even referring to them as marshmallows.
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