Sea salps, the secret swimmer of the ocean.

 

Sea salps, the secret swimmer of the ocean.

I bet most of my dear readers haven't heard about sea salps, ever ! But don't worry I understand your dilemma. If it wasn't for National Geographic Channel's documentary on sea salps I wouldn't be writing about these fascinating sea salps. One fine day , the Storm Bay beach in  Tasmania encountered some strange, transparent, jellyfish like species.On further observation, Dr Lisa Ann Gershwin , who's an American - Australian biologist found that these species were sea salps. Even tough they looked like jellyfish actually they weren't jellyfish. Well how can I be so sure about that?Sea salps don't have any stinging materials called nematocysts, so you are out of danger and they got all the organs like heart, brain, lungs, stomach, muscles which cannot be found in jellyfish.Not only in the beaches of Australia, sea salps were abundantly found in the Southern ocean, near Antarctica.  

Sea salps make friends easily and they stick together.Well, you'll might be thinking as to why I mentioned something like this? It's because these salps are rarely found as individual species instead they're found as chains. They move, feed and live together as a chain. Sea salps got muscle bands encircling their body.Food is taken from the incoming stream and diverted to the stomach.Water exits the body of these creatures due to the contraction of the muscle bands allowing them to move forward through water.This is commonly known as the jet propulsion system.Mechanical engineers you have got something to learn from them.

Sorry to say this but I got to know about a situation where these salps had to say goodbye to their friends and break off. That's during reproduction. So, when the sea salps are aggregated into chains they are female colonies. The females breaks off from the aggregate and release  a single embryo. The solitary females then go on to develop testis,  become males and fertilize the aggregates. Interesting right? I wasn't expecting this too.

Now here's a fun fact.Salps are the fastest growing multicellular animals on earth. They can grow to maturity by 48 hours increasing their length by 10% per hour. Under favourable conditions these species can number upto 400 per cubic meter of water. Well,  now that's fast.Dr Gershwin stated it like this 

" Let's say that it's born at midnight, by noon it's a parent and by midnight it's a grandparent."

But unfortunately they have a short life span. Salp fusiforms found in Storm Bay lives up to only 22 days. As these sea salps are considered as large zooplanktons, they feed on phytoplanktons and algae.

During phytoplankton and algal blooms, the salp population increases rapidly by consuming them. Therefore, the water becomes clean and clear because these salp buddies have filtered out and eaten all the algae. So, it's the perfect time for a dive or snorkel. Salps are also important for recycling nutrients through different depth zones on the ocean. As they move up and down through the ocean eating and excreting, they spread nutrients downwards to other ocean communities 

Another interesting fact is that, the feces of sea salps called fecal pellets sinks to the bottom of the ocean and Carbon is carried away from where it will enter the atmosphere. So because of this nutrients are available for the deep sea plant species.

Now that the cat is out of the box, sea salps are not a mystery anymore but a treasure to be protected everyday.

Written by - Chanmi Dalpadadu 

1st year ( 23/24 Batch )

#AQUATICS

#ASA

#USJ