[NEWSWEEK] Mysterious creatures called sea pickles are showing up in large numbers on the West Coast. These organisms are actually conglomerations of zooids—small, multicellular organisms—which come together into tubular shapes that in this case stretch from about 6 inches to 2 feet long, according to EarthFix, an offshoot of Oregon Public Broadcasting.Normally these animals, also known as pyrosomes, are found in tropical waters, and they also are bioluminescent, meaning they produce light. (Pyrosome is derived from the Greek pyro for “fire” and soma for “body.”) Not very well-studied, they can stretch up to 60 feet long, and look something like a living wind sock.
But this spring they began appearing in the eastern Pacific, from Oregon to Alaska, in quantities never before seen—numbers so large that they’ve led fishermen to abandon fishing in certain areas. One researcher pulled up 60,000 of them in 5 minutes using a net, National Geographic reports.