South Oregon Coast's Charleston Facility Gets Unique Salp / 'Gummy Bear of the Deep'

Published 8/25/24 at 8:15 p.m.
By Andre' GW Hagestedt, Oregon Coast Beach Connection

(Charleston, Oregon) – There's someone new at the Charleston Marine Life Center on the south Oregon coast – and they're rather on the amazing side, in spite of having no brain nor spine. (Photo Charleston Marine Life Center)

The Coos Bay-area attraction that's run by UofO just acquired a unique form of salp, sometimes called a Twin-Sailed Salp, one which is bigger than usual.

The facility also recently showed off a rather graceful – even adorable – video of two of their resident lifeforms performing a kind of underwater ballet. It's been an eventful month in Charleston's underwater world.

“We have a short-term guest in our jelly tank,” the center said. “This beauty is a large solitary salp, about the size of an adult's hand and the largest solitary species of salp. It is planktonic (drifting in the water) with a firm, gelatinous, barrel-shaped body that is so translucent you can see its gut.”

Charleston Marine Life Center

Salps are a little like jellyfish to the human eye only: they're actually barely related to them, if at all. They do, however, sometimes get called the “Gummy Bears of the Deep.”

In this case, the Twin-Sailed salp is known a bit more by its Latin name, Thetyis vagina. They, like all other salps, don't live very long (probably a few weeks or less), and they're normally attached to each other in larger colonies. Most salps you'll find on the Oregon coast are actually aggregates: larger colonies of a bunch of little salps connected together.

That's one of the aspects that separates them greatly from jellyfish.

Charleston Marine Life Center

However, the Twin-Sailed is a freak when it comes to this category of relativity freakish marine critters. It can grow much larger by itself than normal salps, with a single one getting up to a foot long or so. This little blob in Charleston is by itself, which makes it intriguing – and a bit rare for aquariums.

“Like other salps, these animals have two alternating forms - a solitary form, and an aggregate colonial form of connecting individuals (that look similar to this but are a bit smaller, have fewer muscle bands, and lack the two dark, tail-like appendages),” the Charleston facility said.

Thetys vagina have no real sails – or rudders – so it's a misnomer. They can't steer themselves and simply drift where the currents take them.

Thetys on the beach - Seaside Aquarium

They also eat a lot – like just about anything that can fit in their gullet. Some studies have shown the Twin-Sailed sometimes has more of a certain kind of phytoplankton in its digestive system than others (like the glowing dinoflagellate), or they've got a lot of everything in there.

“This salp uses the muscular bands you see here to pump water in the front end and out the back end, for propulsion,” the Charleston Marine Life Center said. “As the water passes through the body, an internal mucus net filters out its small, planktonic food.”

See A Rundown of Jelly-Like Salps of Oregon, Washington Coasts

They're a beautiful yet strange lifeform. You'll want to get down to the Coos Bay area soon to catch it.

In the meantime, the facility recently posted the amazing video of its octopus and crystal jelly beboppin' around inside the tank, then amusingly tied it to the Olympics.

“Here at the CMLC Olympics, Polyorchis penicillatus, (Red-eye Medusa, on right) and Aequorea victoria(Crystal Jelly, on left) win the gold in paired artistic swimming,” the center said.

63466 Boat Basin Rd, Charleston, Oregon. (541) 346-7280. cmlc.uoregon.edu

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Andre' GW Hagestedt is editor, owner and primary photographer / videographer of Oregon Coast Beach Connection, an online publication that sees over 1 million pageviews per month. He is also author of several books about the coast.

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