Colonial animal for you taxonomists

My soft neoprene videocam eyepiece cover slipped out from under my wetsuit glove and floated up...on the way up at the beginning of the dive I ran into a plethora of different types of ctenophores, comb jellies and this colonial animal.

Notice in the mid-section there are some animals missing on one side of the bilateral colony.....the photo is a frame capture from my HiDef video footage.

I deleted your other post for you. I assume the second post was because the picture did not attach the first time. You could have just added the picture by using the Edit feature.

As far as your mystery creature. My guess is tunicates.

Yep, it is a salp chain.

Alex

A salp chain and quite possibly Pegea confoederata which occurs world wide. Dave, take a look at this image for a close up view - does this match what you saw?

http://www.oceanlight.com/spotlight.php?img=2494

Thanks for deleting the acidental duplicate post....

Leslie, that photo looks like as close as one is going to get.....

I wonder what the bio-mechanism is that allows pelagic singular animals to find identical species and mechanically attach to each other in geometric symmetry.

I am going back to P.G. in 2 weeks for some more HiDef videography.....maybe this time if I run into them again I'll get some better footage.

I didn't see any flambouyant cuttlefish of harlequin ghost pipefish on the last trip, so those will be on my list too....

Funny how when I swam rather rapidly upwards to retrieve my eyepiece protective cover on my videocam, I saw at least a dozen other types of ctenophores and comb jellies.....one was doing its best impression of a cross between close encounters of the 3rd kind and the alien aquatic creatures in The Abyss. I think the ability to highly control their array of light producing cells including on or off, what color the same cell structure will produce and the speed is REALLY cool.

Here's a video frame capture still of another on the same dive, this one was able to undulate its appendages. I tinkered with it significantly in Photoshop using contrast and color setting so you can see its structure a little better.

What you photographed is a chain of clones. Salps have a very nifty method of alternate generations - Sexually reproducing individuals produce asexual ones which in turn produce sexual offspring. The sexual ones are solitary while the asexual one produce the giant aggregations.

Ctenophores do produce bioluminesce but it's too faint to be visible by us. The color you see is produced by light striking & diffracting through the rows of cilia. It appears to blink on & off as the animal moves & the light catches it at different angles.

The second one you posted is rather nifty as well. I don't have enough resources to figure out what it is outside of a lobate ctenophore.

There's a good book by David Wrobel & Claudia Mills, "Pacific Coast Pelagic Invertebrates: a guide to the common gelatinous animals". While it covers Alaska to Baja California many of the animals are commonly found else where in the world.

So do you ever video the really good stuff like worms?

The extent of my experience with worms is getting microscopic bristles embedded in my fingers working on my reef aquariums...in other words, worms and I have a different relationship than they do with you, lol.

I think my fascination with some animals more so then others has to do with how odd or colorful they are, and/or their awareness/cognitive level.

Shrimp seem to have this whole host of amusing appearances, colors, shapes and behaviors as they go about busying themselves. Ghost pipefish and Leafy Sea Dragons just defy appearance and I get a kick out of their mimicry mechanisms. I have done lots of reading on Mimic octopii and the hypothesis that it is the only animal that will use different types of mimicry of different animals as a defense mechanism, something it is alleged no other animal does. The question remains how it comes to such a behavior, as in it learned? Talk about higher cognitive power.....

Many photogs are into nudibranchs, but although beautiful, to me at least they lack the higher brain power (or so I may erroneously think) of something like a cuttlefish and its most interesting flourescing, or the cognitive skills many shrimps and crabs have. I think pom-pom crabs are hilarious, and harlequin shrimp are just stunningly beautiful. To put my finger near one in my tank and have the crab thrust the tiniest little white anemone at me defiantly is REALLY cool.

Maybe there is something about the human experience where we are drawn to certain animals whose behaviors are more similar to humans because wanting to communicate with animals is so fascinatingly embedded within our existence, but for me, if I ever try to talk to worms, they'd put me away.

So worms aren't my thing....I know that may be heresy to you Leslie and as a result I may just in fact represent something between DemonSpawn and the AntiChrist to you, lol....

I did used to watch the worms that would sprout out of nowhere in my reef aqauriums that would send out really fine white elongated prehensile tentacles and watch them transport detritus up the exterior of their arms to their mouths...that was rather interesting. Maybe there is hope for me after some time in Purgatory?

Each to his or her own..... The way I look at it, Dave, the more people that dislike worms means the more worms just for me!

On that note, there is an upcoming audition for Fear Factor that I think you might do really well as a contestant in....

Are you kidding? That horrible show? The indignities that they force those poor worms to go through are enough to break a worm lover's heart!

Tha reminds me, as I watch that show and I see people freaking out when rats, worms, and generally bizarre looking insects and animals are poured on people who are stamping their feet, I am thinking to myself, be careful! you're going to squash that poor ______ (insert animal name here)

I must be the societal odd man out here as I think that just because an animal is not "cuddly" doesn't mean it deserves to be injured or die to "amuse" us......