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"What's that on the beach?!" Monterey Bay beachcombers and divers were treated to a huge bloom of salps this weekend! The stoke is salpable!
 Time for another Salp Natural History Thread! Salps are gelatinous filter-feeders that drift with and feed in the plankton. Wind and waves sometimes blow these open-ocean emissaries onshore by the thousands—a feast for fishes, invertebrates and other gelata enthusiasts.
Salps do not sting—in fact, they're more closely related to fishes and people than they are to other "jellies"! The brown/orange orb is each salp's gut. Pumping muscle bands push water from one end of the animal to the other through an internal plankton-pasta strainer.
This weekend's salp bloom featured millions of individuals of several different species, including the ones in this thread in the genus Salpa. Salps have an incredibly successful reproductive strategy allowing them to explode in numbers when conditions are right—and it's a doozy.
Salps can be found as solos, or as a chain of dozens of individuals attached together. Same species, two different body morphs. The solo salps produce the chain asexually, meaning the chains are columns of clones. OK, so far so good? Now for the sexy bits:
A young chain is female, and each female clone produces solo salps from eggs that are fertilized by older male chains. The older male chains are female chains that changed sex as they aged—sequential hermaphroditism for the win!
This fluid process between the sexes and sexual/asexual reproduction allows salps to produce new generations at an incredible rate, taking advantage of fleeting oceanic conditions to grow quickly to astronomical abundance. And, that's a big deal for the ocean, and for people.
Salps are thought to have an outsized effect on the flow of nutrients in the ocean's food web. Because their 
sinks, salp poop delivers vital nutrition from the ocean surface to the deep seafloor, taking carbon from the atmosphere to the deep, helping regulate the climate! 
sinks, salp poop delivers vital nutrition from the ocean surface to the deep seafloor, taking carbon from the atmosphere to the deep, helping regulate the climate!
Spent salps from these blooms become food for countless organisms throughout the water column. Some deep-sea communities depend on these ephemeral feasts to survive in the desert of the abyssal plain, according to research by our colleagues @MBARI_News: https://mbayaq.co/2UIPJso
This weekend's salp bloom is a jiggly reminder of the vast community of gelatinous drifters—the gelata—that drift in the open ocean, connecting the surface to the deep and adjusting the Earth's energy flow, unseen by most until a chance encounter on the shore. Wooooo ocean!!
Photo by Seaside beachcomber Charles Schrammel and video by Monterey diver Alison Smith!
