I saw my first Salp Chain on Saturday!

[Mo2vation]

I'm pretty fired up!

I've often seen them in photos, and I'll see singles that have broken off drifting around while I'm on my stops - but I've never personally seen a chain before.

Here are some shots. So cool. They look like vacuum tube kinda scotch-taped together.

Saw this one on Saturday over the Yukon in San Diego. Dive two - I dropped and there it was.

I dig them. I want more!


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Ken

 

[sea nmf]

That is sooooo cool! It was great having the diver in there for perspective, otherwise I would have thought it was about an inch long.

 

[SCUBAJENNIFER]

What exactly is that? A type of Jelly??

 

[MaxPower]

Thats quite interesting, are they rare?

 

[Mo2vation]

They're a Pelagic Tunicate. If you google up Salp Chain you'll see lots of images. They're not "rare" as such, but in nearly 1000 dives, this is the first "chain" I've seen. I've seen several Salp clumps... 2 or 3 together. Never this many.

I was pretty excited. Who knew the first 3 minutes of the dive would throw something at us like this?!

Gotta love diving. You never, EVER know what's going on down there.

---
Ken

 

[Wildcard]

If you do the black water dive off of Kona you will see lots of them but I have to say, that one is HUGE!

 

[spectrum]

Last spring they were just blooming or whatever they doi when we arrive on Bonaire. As the week went on they linked up in to many very long chains to where the water became a 3D obstacle course at some sites especially down south on the double reef.

Pete

 

[drbill]

Now just where have you been all this time Ken? You can see them while crossing the Channel (at least on the slower Catalina Express boats). We see more salps on our shark dives than anything else. Here is one of my newspaper columns on one of the most commonly seen species in SoCal, Cyclosalpa affinis:

Star Thrower Educational Multimedia (S.T.E.M.) Dive Dry Column

Enjoy!

 

[Mo2vation]

Now just where have you been all this time Ken?!

Its one of those wacky things - I've just never seen a chain.

The "links" - those doughnuts - saw lots of those on Saturday by themselves. Saw some of the 6L6's as well.

Just never seen a proper chain.

Strange thing - the ocean is pretty big. Just been missing them all these years!

---
Ken

 

[drbill]

You've just been spending too much time looking at the nudes off the beaches... er, nudies. I used to see some incredibly long chains of them when I was running our boat back in the 60's and 70's to locate drifting kelp rafts off the island.