things on the beach

[ritaxis]

I saw a bunch of things on the beach that I think I ought to have known, but I don't. I took a bunch of pictures of them, and we even cut one open, deciding that they were probably already dead (naturally I'm a little worried that they weren't and that we unnecessarily killed some creature who might even be endangered).






here's a little one, maybe two inches in diameter.



here's a big one, maybe six inches long.

edit: They are orange puffball sponges! Tethya aurantia. The Monterey Bay Aquarium, naturally, had the information I needed.

Comments

It looks

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

like an oak gall or something like that. I've never been beachcombing your area. Does Kelp get gals?

does it move or react when it's cut or is it vegitative?

Re: It looks

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Kelp might get galls, but they wouldn't look like that. For one thing, they'd be growing out of the kelp, and these are independent. The big ones get bits of seaweed stuck in their crevices, but they don't develop the crevices unless they're big. If you look at the outside surface and the cut surface, you can see that it's formed of many sort of cone-shaped (oblong in cross-section) structures that rasdiate from the light-colored gelatinous-looking center. It's not especially gelatinous to the touch, though: it's quite firm, not as hard as a good carrot, but firm like a potato or an apple.

I would not have cut it if I didn't think it was dead. It didn't move. It doesn't look capable of moving: it doean't seem to have any moving parts, and it doesn't look like it's capable of flapping. I had to convince myself the first one was not a rock, actually.

I'm thinking something related to a sponge, maybe. But for a sponge, it's very dense. Well. Maybe that's the wrong word, or maybe I should emphasize that it's only relatively dense, because it's not especially heavy for its size.

I've been hanging out on California beaches off and on most of my life, and spending a fair amount of time on Its beach the last few years, and I've never seen anything like it. Have I seen something like it in the Monterey Bay Aquarium? Is that what's teasing my brain?

[tavella.livejournal.com]

They look almost like *fruits* of some sort.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Almost, though the little one is almost completely smooth and has nothing that could be construed as a stem end or a blossom end.

[(Anonymous)]

They're really interesting. My gut says some kind of very primitive animal, in the coral or anemone kind of direction, but I don't know beyond that. I might have a flick through my book of invertebrates at work tomorrow.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

That was me, logged out again. I don't like whatever it was they did to lj.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

So I did have a look, and if they're animals, I can only really see two possibilities:
Some kind of sponge - there's the sea orange, Suberites which looks vaguely like this. The texture of living sponge is noted as being like liver, so fairly firm.
Some kind of bryozoan - they're known as "sea mosses". Most bryozoans are a lot featherier than these. It seems mainly freshwater bryozoans form blobs.

In both cases, and I'm assuming this generally based on the cut-through picture, as well as the general blobbiness and lack of openings, these would be colonies, and it's the little cones that are the individual animals. What's strange overall is how compact they are - many similar species are trying to maximise surface area, whereas this looks like it's minimising.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Yeppers, it's a sponge: the "orange puffball sponge," a denizen of the kelp forest, and thrown up on shore with a bunch of kelp and kelp commensals.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you found out what it is. And I guess that it's not endangered.