The West coast filled luminescent tube

After three years of extremely warm water along the West coast of the United States in 2017 it is finally cooled, and the sea world seems to be back to normal... But suddenly they appeared.

Starting in the spring millions of bizarre bioluminescent creatures similar to the tube steel to adhere to the network and fill the beaches along the West coast. These rough gelatinous animals, called Agnelli or Pirosmani are cone-shaped tunicates. They usually live in the tropics, but this spring, gathered in the Eastern Pacific ocean in unprecedented numbers and spread from Oregon to the Gulf of Alaska.

"This is really weird, says Jennifer Fisher, a member of the faculty at the University of Oregon in Hatfield. — I've never seen anything like it".

"It's incredible how many of them!", — exclaims his colleague Rick Broder, within 30 years studying different jelly-like creatures in the North-West Pacific ocean.

In one research network per five minutes typed 60,000 pyroom. Fishermen near Sitka refused to fishing because they could not remove the tubular organisms from hooks. They filled the water column for a few tens of meters. But no one knows why.

As a rule, pyrosoma so rare that some scientists don't even heard about them. What will be the consequences of this invasion, experts still do not undertake to say, but believe that it will affect the ecology of the ocean. For example, when the whole mass of pyroom will start to die, their decomposing bodies can take a huge amount of oxygen from coastal seas, putting at risk the remaining sea life.

They are usually found in places like the Ivory Coast, the Mediterranean sea or the waters of Australia and Florida. Some specimens can reach a length of 60 cm and more. Pyrosoma strong as cucumbers, and covered with tiny tubercles. To move up and down in the water column, they use little hairs.

In 2014 and 2015, when the thermal bubble is temporarily transformed the Eastern part of the Pacific ocean, animals from different areas began to appear where before was never found. Living in the warm waters, sharks and tuna were caught in Alaska. Tropical marine snakes crawling from California. And a handful of pyroom began to wash ashore.

Then the temperature began to fall, and everything seems to be back to normal, but suddenly those creatures started to multiply, zapolleoniv by the spring of the sea and the land on the West coast and especially in Alaska. Scientists can not explain how and why it happened.

"These guys probably consume a lot of food. Usually they eat small particles, but they have to eat a lot, to achieve this density," says Broder.

Whether they serve themselves food for someone, is also unclear. Scientists have found some in the belly of the fish, but she ate them willingly or accidentally, when he was in the mob of glowing aliens, we can only guess.

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»