The tides brought hordes of unidentified pinkish, blob-critters to the shores of Huntington Beach last night, prompting excited speculation on Facebook that this may be the start of a real life horror movie.
The creepy-crawlies certainly look the part. The slug-like critters squirm, slither, and burrow into the sand like the stuff of cosmic horror stories. “Definitely baby tremor monsters”, one Facebook commenter declared. “Aliens sent here to suck our brains out and rule our world. Just sayin”, another suggested.
Photo: Orange County Register
Many Huntington Beach lifeguards were similarly flummoxed and had little to add by way of explanation. “I’ve never seen anything like that before, it looks odd,” said Huntington Marine Safety Lt. Claude Panis, a veteran lifeguard with 38 years under his belt, to The OC Register. One lifeguard, however, said he had seen the creatures before, though never in these numbers. “They’ve made an appearance on our beaches before,” Huntington Beach Marine Safety Lt. Eric Dieterman said to The LA Times. “Not in this number, but I have seen them in the past.”
As it turns out, the jelly creatures are most likely pelagic tunicates, which are also referred to as salps, according to Matt Bracken, associate professor at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Irvine. “These marine invertebrates look sort of like jellyfish, but they are actually more closely related to vertebrates (e.g., humans) than to other invertebrates,” he explained. “They occasionally bloom off the California coast.”
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