Pyrosomes

[Zak]

What are those blobby creatures that washed up on West Coast beaches?

The marine heat waves have had wide-ranging effects on the food web, likely impacting mammals and fish, a study found.

www.seattletimes.com

“They went from being zero — completely absent as far as anybody knows — to being one of the most abundant things in the entire ecosystem,” Gomes said.

According to the study, pyrosomes have been considered “trophic dead ends” since they have low energy content and most of them end up as detritus. It’s not clear how nutritious they are to the species who have consumed them in recent years, Gomes said, which means species further up the food chain, from the fish caught commercially to marine mammals, have likely been affected.

“That has an impact on the entire ecosystem … the pyrosome is consuming energy that normally would have gone through multiple prey to eventually end up in a salmon,” he said.

 

[Dustin Chromers]

They are all over the beaches at times. Never saw them till recently. There are allot of them. Probably a harbinger of some total collapse in the food web. But hey, who cares, gotta keep adding to that garbage gyre to make up for all the land we are losing to sea level rising. Gotta make sure that recycle bin and derelict commercial fishing gear make it to the great Pacific garbage patch.

 

[Dave Boyle]

They are all over the beaches at times. Never saw them till recently. There are allot of them. Probably a harbinger of some total collapse in the food web. But hey, who cares, gotta keep adding to that garbage gyre to make up for all the land we are losing to sea level rising. Gotta make sure that recycle bin and derelict commercial fishing gear make it to the great Pacific garbage patch.

Indeed, there's a load of ecosystems that have been hosed with the addition/extreme prevalence of another species. On a UK site I was just reading about how the Victorians inadvertently messed up a load of fairly good trout lochs in the Highlands by adding minnows thinking they were adding an extra food source. Turned out the minnows were really good at eating up the invertebrates so the trout there are now stunted by lack of food, they didn't really eat the minnows.... As with other posts re bucket biology, once the minnows are in you can never get rid of them.

To me it reads like the warming ocean, a by product of global warming or something. Not looking to promote a debate on that cause here as this thread will go way south. But we can all agree on a crappy outcome for other marine beasties for sure. Hoping there's an anticancer/aging etc drug or something valuable in them so a comm fishery can fish the crap out of them, that'd take care of it...quick

Dave

 

[Dustin Chromers]

Indeed, there's a load of ecosystems that have been hosed with the addition/extreme prevalence of another species. On a UK site I was just reading about how the Victorians inadvertently messed up a load of fairly good trout lochs in the Highlands by adding minnows thinking they were adding an extra food source. Turned out the minnows were really good at eating up the invertebrates so the trout there are now stunted by lack of food, they didn't really eat the minnows.... As with other posts re bucket biology, once the minnows are in you can never get rid of them.

To me it reads like the warming ocean, a by product of global warming or something. Not looking to promote a debate on that cause here as this thread will go way south. But we can all agree on a crappy outcome for other marine beasties for sure. Hoping there's an anticancer/aging etc drug or something valuable in them so a comm fishery can fish the crap out of them, that'd take care of it...quick

Dave

They wash up and look like they could be candied and redistributed for the pleasure of marine foodies.

 

[Nick Clayton]

Saw these things for the first time while Salmon fishing in Westport 6 or 7 years ago. They were quite abundant that year. I'd pull up a downrigger and there would be a metric ton of them on the ball and the clip. They never really got on the gear too much luckily. It drove me nuts for a while as Id send a rigger down and could watch the line as they just loaded up. I was literally clearing lines every few minutes and just working my ass off. At some point we figured out that having piles of them on the ball/clip didn't impact the salmon bite at all so I was able to relax some.

I did have a lot of fun with them, as I played all sorts of fun games with the captain using the "sea pickles" as we called them. Used to zip tie them to his kicker tiller handle, the throttles in the cabin, put a few in his lunchbox etc. Good times.