What is this?

[H2Andy]

i saw them off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, in about 60 feet of water, last May.

they were attached to the side of a sunken barge (the Train-1 barge). The dark part at the bottom of the picture is a hole in the side of the barge.

anybody know what these are?

thanks in advance

 

[archman]

When you touched it (PLEASE tell me you touched it), was it hard, squishy, or semi-rigid? This simple thing can narrow it down to say, tunicate, egg mass, cnidarian, etc..

Also, what did it taste like? just kidding...

My shaky guess is either a demo- or calcareous sponge.

 

[LUBOLD8431]

Well, Im just guessing here, but they almost look like something I saw a few years ago down in the keys. I did alot of research on this, and I found that the technical term for those is "little white globby things". Thats the best I could do...

lol...

 

[MarkH]

Looks like colonial ascidians (tunicates) to me, but then I'm not a biologist. At least that's what colonial ascidians look like on our side of the continent.

 

[archman]

... possibly a compound tunicate however. The lack of visible siphons however I find suspicious. The common excurrent siphons SHOULD be apparent.

 

[H2Andy]

no i did not touch it, alas.

i did, however, taste it, and it tasted like chicken.

oh, also, i should say that i saw one of these things
on the bottom, close to the barge. it appeared fastened
to the bottom and not moving. this was a flat bottom,
with lots of dead shells around (mostly clams and scallops).

 

[archman]

Okay, my professor (who is somehow smarter than ME) is giving it the definite thumbs-up for compound tunicate. The rough texture which I thought looked like spicules are actually zooids, which are the individual "members" of the colony. If you had better resolution, the excurrent siphons each group of zooids shares would be visible.

There is a SINGLE taxonomist in the world who could positively nail it down to a species. It would have to be cut and sectioned.

Some tunicates DO in fact taste like chicken, or at least rubber chickens. I occasionally lick marine life, you see...

 

[H2Andy]

thanks so much!

no wonder i couldn't figure out what the heck it was.