When he grabbed a transparent, shrimp-like creature that was swimming close to the ocean’s surface, a fisherman from New Zealand was in wonder.
While out fishing with his two boys Conaugh and Finn, Stewart Fraser discovered the transparent “shrimp” 43 miles to the north, off the Karikari Peninsula of the North Island. Fraser first intended to catch the “shrimp,” but he changed his mind and opted to look more closely. The creature was described as having firm, almost jelly-like scales. The only thing he could see within the transparent body of the creature was a little orange blob, he said.
Deborah Cracknell, research lead at the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth, identified the animal as a Salpa maggiore despite the fact that Fraser was unaware of what he had collected (Salpa maxima). The aquarium’s head of conservation and communication, Paul Cox, stated that not many people are familiar with salps and that they are usually found in cooler waters.
Salps, he said, are organisms with a barrel-like form that move by contracting and forcing water through their gelatinous bodies. He said they had an unusual life cycle, with alternating generations either as lone individuals or in groups creating lengthy chains, and feed on phytoplankton from the highest sunlight layer of the ocean. He claimed they filter the water using internal feeding filters.
Similar to jellyfish and hydroids, salps are somewhat protected from predators by their translucence.