So many sea creatures we don’t know about until a beachcast drops them at our feet. It happened again on December 13th, 2016. When I topped the foredune just ahead of the high tide, I didn’t know a mystery awaited in the drift line.
I had to get on Twitter right away to find out what I was looking at. Within minutes @RebaFay and @mle425 helped me out. They are both great naturalists, and I’m grateful to them for letting me know the spiny cartilaginous-feeling organisms I found were pelagic colonial tunicates called pyrosomes.
Jackie Sones shares a ton of interesting information about this, or a very similar pyrosome, in “Fire bodies”. Her blog, The Natural History of Bodega Head, is wonderful and full of great coastal natural history. iNaturalist has a page on pyrosomes here. A recent article, Rare, Bizarre Glowing Creatures Strand on Oregon Coast Beaches, gives additional information about pyrosomes and photos by Tiffany Boothe of Seaside Aquarium.
Acknowledgements
I thank Emily Jones and Rebecca Johnson for helping me identify the pyrosomes and pointing me to “Fire Bodies” and the iNaturalist page on pyrosomes. I am also grateful to Stephen Grace for bringing the article about pyrosomes on Oregon coast beaches to my attention. Stephen is the author of Tides and Trails, a website and blog devoted to great photos and the natural history of the northern Oregon coast; it’s well worth following Stephen’s work.
I updated this post on January 14, 2023.
theoutershores 
Amazing!
The ocean is filled with such mysterious creatures.
Wow! Neat! Are they actually alive? waiting to be swept up by the tide to go back to sea? Bizarre! never seen anything like it before!!
OK, I looked it up…almost like a Jelly fish of some sort but weirder!! LOL…
I was surprised by them. I was on my to photograph a high tide. Got so engrossed in these I missed it! I don’t know if they are still alive or why they ended up on the beach.
Natures amazes us every day…:) Great Photo’s!! 🙂 T.
You’re so right. Thanks!
They look a bit like cucumbers crossed with caterpillars! 🙂
I like that interpretation. I didn’t mention it in my post but those cucumbers are bioluminescent and they have a hollow center inhabited by a small shrimp.
It must be amazing walking on the beach in the dark. I hope they’re bright enough to stop you standing on them!
Fantastically interesting! Thank you.
You’re welcome! It’s fun to share stuff when it is appreciated. I thank you for letting me know.
You bring us intriguing looks into the often unseen — thanks for sharing your eye’s view of the outers shores and the wonder they offer.
I’m happy to hear you appreciate it. You’re very welcome. Thanks for taking the time to tell me. You share a lot of great stuff too!
Thanks. Sometimes here on the desert, if the wind is from the south, I turn my nose into it and can almost, for a moment, smell the Sea of Cortez. 😉
Hi there, I’m Peter, the Public Relations Coordinator at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Could we use some of your pyrosome photos in a blog post of ours?
Sure Peter, that would be fine. Credit them if possible. Those images may be optimized for the web; I can get you the originals if you need that. Just let me know.
Thank you! You can see the blog post here: http://aquarium.org/odd-colonial-creatures-wash-ashore-oregon/