Photographer Steve never imagined that in his lifetime, he would encounter such a bizarre creature in the ocean:
Resembling a giant elongated pocket, approximately 8 meters long, emitting a faint light, hollow and tubular in structure with an open front end and a closed tail end, leaving only a small hole. Its entire body is semi-transparent like jelly, tinged with a hint of pink, with a large diameter capable of accommodating a person inside.
Upon gentle touch, the "pocket" was found to be quite soft.
Steve was deeply attracted by the "veil" in front of him, and he even had the idea of diving in to explore.
However, his companion immediately stopped Steve's reckless behavior. The two of them spent an hour taking photos around this organism before leaving.
Once back on shore, his companion explained earnestly, "After you know what this thing is, then decide whether you want to dive in. I bet you'll thank me for it!"
The versatile pyrosome
With its pink hue, the pyrosome is actually a colony of numerous individual organisms.
Upon closer inspection, one can observe the myriad tiny organisms covering its body. These creatures are known as pyrosomes, a type of free-floating tunicate.
Each individual is incredibly small, measuring only a few millimeters in length, resembling a bell shape with one end open and the other closed, capable of emitting light.
As filter feeders, pyrosomes survive by continuously drawing in seawater, filtering out and consuming the plankton within it.
A single fire salp is insignificant in the ocean, so they evolved a colonial lifestyle to increase their chances of survival.
Fire salps link together one after another, forming a pocket-like structure that drifts with the currents in the ocean. Sometimes, they slowly swim forward, allowing a large amount of seawater to fall into their "bags." Occasionally, they collectively emit light to attract plankton actively into their bags.
At this point, individual fire salps can enjoy the food in the seawater to their heart's content.
Depending on the number, fire salps can vary greatly in length!
The pocket-like fire salps at the beginning can reach up to 18 meters in length and over 1.8 meters in width, while the shortest fire salps are less than 1 centimeter.
Once the size of a colony of fire salps reaches a certain level, it will not decrease without external influences; instead, it will only grow larger.
They can reproduce asexually (or sexually), continuously adding colony members and replacing those that have died.
The rise in seawater temperature leads to a massive outbreak of fire salps.
There are four known types of fire salps, with significant differences in their colonial shapes. They can be the thin, bag-like structures mentioned earlier or objects with a plastic-like texture.
The transparent or slightly pink "plastic tube" below is also a colony of fire salps, consisting of several hundred Atlantic fire salps, with each protrusion representing an individual. Due to its appearance, people also refer to it as sea cucumbers or sea pickles, but I find it somewhat resembling a light-colored sea cucumber.
Resembling a light-colored sea cucumber?
The Atlantic sea pickle primarily inhabits the depths of the ocean at around 250 meters. During the day, it remains hidden in the ocean, only surfacing at night, engaging in a daily migration between the depths and the surface.
Typically, such creatures are only seen by divers.
However, starting from 2017, these semi-transparent organisms have been frequently appearing on the beaches near Oregon and Washington.
Local residents were astonished to see these "jelly-like" creatures for the first time and some puzzled individuals even collected them in baskets.
Experts issued a warning, stating that while the Atlantic sea pickle is harmless, it should not be consumed, and it is not recommended to feed it to dogs.
Scientists are puzzled: why did the normally temperate Atlantic pyrosome appear in the cold waters off Oregon in the spring, and in such large numbers?
In late May 2017, a research vessel deployed a net 100 meters below the sea surface and in just 5 minutes, around 60,000 pyrosomes were captured.
These pyrosomes seemed to be out of control, reproducing rapidly to the point of clogging fishing nets, hindering fishermen from catching fish.
Scientists from the US NOAA speculate that this may be related to the warming of Pacific Ocean waters.
The first sightings of pyrosomes were in California waters in 2012. In 2013, the Pacific Ocean experienced a prolonged marine heatwave known as "the Blob". Due to rising water temperatures, these organisms spread northward. In the spring of 2017, a pyrosome outbreak occurred in Oregon waters, and even further north in Alaska.
The massive appearance of pyrosomes has caused significant losses for fishermen and has greatly impacted the marine food chain.
Scientists have long considered the fire salp to be a "dead end" in the food chain.
It consumes a large amount of plankton, but no organisms are willing to eat the fire salp, possibly because it is unappetizing, low in energy, or difficult to digest. This has led many organisms to prefer eating toxic jellyfish over the fire salp.
While the fire salp used to be scarce, its population has now surged, causing it to deplete a large amount of nutrients in its habitat. This poses a risk of food shortage for predators at the same level of the food chain, such as krill, which are among the victims. Subsequently, other fish that feed on krill will decrease due to the reduction in krill population.
According to an article published on March 13, 2024, in the journal "Nature," researchers found through simulations that due to the lack of animals willing to consume this peculiar organism, 98% of dead fire salps will sink to the seabed.
This means that the nutrients ingested by the fire salp during its lifetime will ultimately remain on the seabed and will not be passed on to higher-level predators.
Scientists are also concerned that the death of fire salps will create a massive dead zone on the seabed, as the decomposition of fire salps will consume a significant amount of oxygen.
After understanding all this, can people crawl into the giant fire ant pocket?
Experts advise: It's best not to try!
Because the connections between individual fire ants are stronger than we imagine, held together by sticky secretions.
According to a report from 2013, someone found a dead penguin inside a large fire ant pocket. It's clear that the penguin, once inside, couldn't escape and died.
Humans are stronger than penguins, so if one were to crawl in, they wouldn't necessarily be trapped.
However, in the struggle, the fire ant colony could be "shattered," with individual fire ants possibly entering the ears, mouth, and other places. There's no need to destroy the "kingdom" they painstakingly built.
