Hundreds of animals nicknamed “sea pickles” have been washing up on the shores of Oregon, and they are causing quite a stir in the Beaver State.
“They’re not the easiest things to describe,” Tiffany Boothe, administrator at the Seaside Aquarium in the state, told USA TODAY.
While they are called “sea pickles” based on their looks, the animals are actually a pyrosome. It is a “colony” of multi-celled organisms called zooids, meaning individual zooids will be tightly packed together to form a bigger version of themselves, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
National Geographic refers to them as the “cockroaches of the sea,” and they are able to illuminate the ocean waters.
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A single zooid is about the size of a grain of rice, but conjoined together, these colonies can make the creature about 60 feet long and wide enough for a human to fit in, according to Oceana, a non-profit ocean conservation organization.
In 2018, a pair of divers encountered a 26-foot long pyrosome, and Boothe said she heard recently a diver took a photo of themselves riding one.
Read more: yahoo
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