A marine organism, similar to jellyfish and which rarely appears in coastal areas, has been appearing along the Algarve coast, but, unlike some jellyfish, its presence is harmless.
Despite being an oceanic animal, the salp has been detected along the Algarve coast, which may be related to currents, because it is a species that feeds on phytoplankton and its movement is influenced by maritime movement, explained Joana Cruz, researcher at the Center for Marine Sciences (CCMAR) at the University of Algarve (UAlg).
It is a species of tunicate, invertebrate, measuring between 1 and 30 centimetres, which is “completely harmless”, unlike several species of jellyfish, which pose a risk to humans because they sting.
According to the researcher, these gelatinous and translucent, barrel-shaped organisms, very similar to jellyfish, have a very important role in capturing carbon from the oceans, helping environmental sustainability, but they are not usually found in coastal areas,
Joana Cruz usually carries out a lot of research work in coastal areas, for example in the lower estuary of the Guadiana River or even in the Ria Formosa, due to her specialization in phytoplankton, and “salps never appear”, she highlighted.
The expert believes that they have been dragged by the sea to coastal areas, because “they cannot overcome the current”, especially when “they grow very quickly - because they have very fast growth rates -, they enter a phase of chain volume and are dragged” .
“In terms of reproduction, they can have a solitary phase and another phase, in which they form colonies. They present two types of reproduction, when they are solitary they reproduce asexually, and it is with the salps that come from this asexual reduction that these colonies are formed”, she said.
Joana Cruz highlighted that a colony is usually made up of “many individuals clinging to each other” and the group can be “hundreds of metres” long.
Feeding is done through body contractions that allow the “pumping of water to capture phytoplankton” and has the ability to “transfer all the carbon that exists on the surface to deeper areas” of the ocean.
“Through, for example, feces, which are very large and accumulate a lot of carbon, and also from the animals themselves, from the salps that die, which end up sinking to deeper areas. This is good because carbon will be captured and, therefore, they are quite important in these processes”, she highlighted.
According to Joana Cruz, because they are similar to jellyfish, people may be scared, but these organisms “do no harm”, because they do not have “stinging cells”, she reiterated.
