Pyrosomes: The Ultimate Social

Networkers
Posted on October 15, 2017 Leave a Comment

This pyrosome is made up of thousands of tiny organisms linked together as one. (Photo
credit: Mark Conlin/Alamy)

If you’re looking for a strange sea creature, you can’t get much weirder than the giant
pyrosome. With an appearance like a monster out of a science fiction movie, those who’ve
had the good luck to see them have likened them to everything from unicorns, due to their
rareness, to the Borg, because of how they stick together and seem to be part of a collective.

Pyrosomes are often referred to as “corn cob jelly,” but they are not really jellyfish. They are
urochordates, an animal group that is ancestral to chordates, or animals with backbones. The
most important thing to understand about the giant pyrosome is that it’s not a single
organism. It is in fact sometimes hundreds of thousands tiny, “cloned” organisms, called
zooids, linked together in a gelatinous “tunic.” The zooids arrange themselves in a tube that’s
hollow at one end, with each zooid’s head poking out of the gelatin along all sides of the tube
to facilitate feeding. Although individual zooids are only a millimeter or two in size,
pyrosome colonies can grow to up to several meters. Perhaps one reason they are rarely seen
is that they most commonly live in the open oceans and rarely come close to shore.

Aside from their apparently menacing, sea monster-like appearance, what seems to fascinate
most people about the giant pyrosomes is how they move: like a jet engine. While
cephalopods, like octopi and squid, may ingest and expel water to “jet” themselves forward,
only pyrosomes do it in a completely continuous way. Pyrosomes are filter eaters, which
means they eat plankton. Each zooid takes water into its mouth with cilia, filters out the food
in its stomach, and then expels the water into the empty center of the tube. The constant
inflow of water into the tube’s center displaces water out the open end and so pushes the
organism forward. While the speed isn’t much, barely a crawl, it is remarkable how it’s
produced by the thousands of zooids working together, all while eating. Mostly, however,
even the largest pyrosomes are so light and live so near the ocean’s surface that their
positions and movements are really the result of whatever current is at work at the time.

If their name hasn’t already given you a hint (pyro = “fire” and soma = “body”), pyrosomes
exhibit bioluminescence. While certainly not the only sea organism to produce light,
scientists find the pale-blue pyrosome light particularly fascinating because of its brilliance
and long lastingness. Also, individual zooids not only produce the light, but they also seem to
“send” it to the other zooids around them, making the light appear to spread like a “wave”
through the colony and even to neighboring colonies. It’s this collective form of
bioluminescence that really sets the pyrosomes apart from other light-producing sea
creatures. While the phenomenon of bioluminescence itself may not be that beneficial to us,
as biologist David Bennett has pointed out, studying it has led to a “wide variety of
laboratory techniques” that are “helping scientists to discover many new phenomena, and aid
development of treatments for many diseases.” One indication of how seriously scientists
now consider the study of bioluminescence is that the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was
awarded to a group of chemists in recognition for their discovery and development of the
green fluorescent protein GFP.

If you read anything else about giant pyrosomes, you’ll probably read something about how
they “may look menacing,” but are in fact “soft and gentle” giants. They are indeed quite
light, and have been described as “soft and fluffy” by those who have actually been able to
feel them, but you might want to hold off from thinking they’re completely harmless. One
diver reported finding a two-meter long pyrosome with a dead penguin stuck in it!
Apparently, the penguin mistakenly had swum into the open end of the pyrosome and
couldn’t get loose. Penguins are not weak birds, so it’s clear that the giant pyrosome can
“pack a pretty good punch” itself.

The 60 foot long jet powered animal you’ve

probably never heard of
RR Helm August 1, 2013
Screen cap from one of the only pyrosome videos out there (see the end of this post).

I was living in Africa the first time I saw a pyrosome, and I nearly cried. I was doing research
on plankton, which meant long days staring down a microscope plucking through tiny dead
things. And then there it was. I actually gasped in recognition. My first real life pyrosome.
Among many marine-inclined folks such as moi, pyrosomes are like unicorns. Completely
improbable, utterly mysterious. And why?

For starters: if the Borg and the Clone Wars had a baby it would be a pyrosome. One long
pyrosomes is actually a collection of thousands of clones, with each individual capable of
copying itself and adding to the colony. And like members of the Borg, which are mentally
connected, pyrosome members are physically connected– actually sharing tissues. And while
the Borg live in a big scary ship, pyrosomes are the big scary ship. The whole colony is
shaped like a giant thimble with a point on one end and an opening on the other, and in some
species this opening can be up to 6 feed (2 meters) wide– large enough to fit a full grown
human inside [1]. Under normal circumstances, this sort of thing would scare the crap out of
me.

But the pyrosome I found was cute. No larger than a jellybean. As I looked closer, I realized I
could see right through it. Right into the guts. Each little “wire basket” is the stomach of one
member of the colony. They take water in through a mouth on the outside of their space-ship
body, pass it through the little basket to filter out the nom bits, and squirt water out the other
end, into the big hollow space in the middle. Pyrosomes look terrifying, but like many giants
of the sea, they’re actually filter feeders.

A small pyrosome colony. Each basket-like structure is the gut of an individual member.
Photo by Stefan Siebert, used with permission.

And it’s this filter feeding that gives pyrosomes their rocket power. Well, almost. My
friend, aerospace engineer turned biologist, Henry Astley, put it like this: “jets have
to do four things: Suck, squeeze, bang and blow.” Suck in air, compress it, explode
some fuel, and blow the resulting force in the direction opposite where you want to
go. The squeeze and bang part need compressible gas and fuel. Two things
pyrosomes don’t have. But the other two, suck and blow, are expert territory for these
guys.
A closeup shot of individual members of the pyrosome colony. With the basket-like gut
visible. Photo by Stefan Siebert, used with permission.

Many animals use sucking and blowing movement to get around. Squid and
octopuses use it, as well as certain types of jellyfish, which move like squid by sucking
water under their bell and then shooting it out. This is a pulsing jet-like movement.
Only one opening doing both the sucking and the blowing, and therefore the animal
moves in fits and starts. Not at all like the smooth, constant stream of a true jets
engine. The only animal to move with such fluid jet-like propulsion is the pyrosome.
Because each member noshes on tiny plankton, they must constantly suck water in
and over their baskets, and constantly blow waste out the hollow center. Thus they
are moving at a steady, albeit painfully slow, speed.

So they’re giant, terrifying looking, and trolling through the depths of the ocean,
waiting for you to swim in one end and get stuck. Maybe. But fortunately, in addition
to being slow moving filter feeders, they’re also delicate and fluffy. One diver
described a pyrosome saying “it felt like an exquisitely soft feather boa” [2]. And this
is why I almost cried when I saw my first wee pyrosome. Despite their improbable
nature, these horrifying giants, the spawn of the worst movie villains, are actually
delicate and fragile. The bizarre unicorns of the sea.
Update (03August 2013): Do not swim inside a pyrosome. While they are said to be quite
soft, K Gowlett-Holmes reports finding a 2 meter (~ 6.5 ft long) pyrosome with a dead
penguin trapped inside. K Gowlett-Holmes writes in a comment below: “The penguin had
obviously swum in the open end of the tube then couldn’t turn – it was jammed in the apex of
the pyrosome and its beak was just poking through the colony matrix. Even fairy penguins
are quite strong – the fact it could not break free shows just how tough some pyrosomes
are”. O_O

yrosomes: The Ultimate Social Networkers

Posted on October 15, 2017 Leave a Comment

This pyrosome is made up of thousands of tiny organisms linked together as one. (Photo
credit: Mark Conlin/Alamy)

If you’re looking for a strange sea creature, you can’t get much weirder than the giant
pyrosome. With an appearance like a monster out of a science fiction movie, those who’ve
had the good luck to see them have likened them to everything from unicorns, due to their
rareness, to the Borg, because of how they stick together and seem to be part of a collective.

Pyrosomes are often referred to as “corn cob jelly,” but they are not really jellyfish. They are
urochordates, an animal group that is ancestral to chordates, or animals with backbones. The
most important thing to understand about the giant pyrosome is that it’s not a single
organism. It is in fact sometimes hundreds of thousands tiny, “cloned” organisms, called
zooids, linked together in a gelatinous “tunic.” The zooids arrange themselves in a tube that’s
hollow at one end, with each zooid’s head poking out of the gelatin along all sides of the tube
to facilitate feeding. Although individual zooids are only a millimeter or two in size,
pyrosome colonies can grow to up to several meters. Perhaps one reason they are rarely seen
is that they most commonly live in the open oceans and rarely come close to shore.

Aside from their apparently menacing, sea monster-like appearance, what seems to fascinate
most people about the giant pyrosomes is how they move: like a jet engine. While
cephalopods, like octopi and squid, may ingest and expel water to “jet” themselves forward,
only pyrosomes do it in a completely continuous way. Pyrosomes are filter eaters, which
means they eat plankton. Each zooid takes water into its mouth with cilia, filters out the food
in its stomach, and then expels the water into the empty center of the tube. The constant
inflow of water into the tube’s center displaces water out the open end and so pushes the
organism forward. While the speed isn’t much, barely a crawl, it is remarkable how it’s
produced by the thousands of zooids working together, all while eating. Mostly, however,
even the largest pyrosomes are so light and live so near the ocean’s surface that their
positions and movements are really the result of whatever current is at work at the time.

If their name hasn’t already given you a hint (pyro = “fire” and soma = “body”), pyrosomes
exhibit bioluminescence. While certainly not the only sea organism to produce light,
scientists find the pale-blue pyrosome light particularly fascinating because of its brilliance
and long lastingness. Also, individual zooids not only produce the light, but they also seem to
“send” it to the other zooids around them, making the light appear to spread like a “wave”
through the colony and even to neighboring colonies. It’s this collective form of
bioluminescence that really sets the pyrosomes apart from other light-producing sea
creatures. While the phenomenon of bioluminescence itself may not be that beneficial to us,
as biologist David Bennett has pointed out, studying it has led to a “wide variety of
laboratory techniques” that are “helping scientists to discover many new phenomena, and aid
development of treatments for many diseases.” One indication of how seriously scientists
now consider the study of bioluminescence is that the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was
awarded to a group of chemists in recognition for their discovery and development of the
green fluorescent protein GFP.

If you read anything else about giant pyrosomes, you’ll probably read something about how
they “may look menacing,” but are in fact “soft and gentle” giants. They are indeed quite
light, and have been described as “soft and fluffy” by those who have actually been able to
feel them, but you might want to hold off from thinking they’re completely harmless. One
diver reported finding a two-meter long pyrosome with a dead penguin stuck in it!
Apparently, the penguin mistakenly had swum into the open end of the pyrosome and
couldn’t get loose. Penguins are not weak birds, so it’s clear that the giant pyrosome can
“pack a pretty good punch” itself.

The 60 foot long jet powered animal you’ve

probably never heard of
RR Helm August 1, 2013
Screen cap from one of the only pyrosome videos out there (see the end of this post).

I was living in Africa the first time I saw a pyrosome, and I nearly cried. I was doing research
on plankton, which meant long days staring down a microscope plucking through tiny dead
things. And then there it was. I actually gasped in recognition. My first real life pyrosome.
Among many marine-inclined folks such as moi, pyrosomes are like unicorns. Completely
improbable, utterly mysterious. And why?

For starters: if the Borg and the Clone Wars had a baby it would be a pyrosome. One long
pyrosomes is actually a collection of thousands of clones, with each individual capable of
copying itself and adding to the colony. And like members of the Borg, which are mentally
connected, pyrosome members are physically connected– actually sharing tissues. And while
the Borg live in a big scary ship, pyrosomes are the big scary ship. The whole colony is
shaped like a giant thimble with a point on one end and an opening on the other, and in some
species this opening can be up to 6 feed (2 meters) wide– large enough to fit a full grown
human inside [1]. Under normal circumstances, this sort of thing would scare the crap out of
me.

But the pyrosome I found was cute. No larger than a jellybean. As I looked closer, I realized I
could see right through it. Right into the guts. Each little “wire basket” is the stomach of one
member of the colony. They take water in through a mouth on the outside of their space-ship
body, pass it through the little basket to filter out the nom bits, and squirt water out the other
end, into the big hollow space in the middle. Pyrosomes look terrifying, but like many giants
of the sea, they’re actually filter feeders.

A small pyrosome colony. Each basket-like structure is the gut of an individual member.
Photo by Stefan Siebert, used with permission.

And it’s this filter feeding that gives pyrosomes their rocket power. Well, almost. My
friend, aerospace engineer turned biologist, Henry Astley, put it like this: “jets have
to do four things: Suck, squeeze, bang and blow.” Suck in air, compress it, explode
some fuel, and blow the resulting force in the direction opposite where you want to
go. The squeeze and bang part need compressible gas and fuel. Two things
pyrosomes don’t have. But the other two, suck and blow, are expert territory for these
guys.
A closeup shot of individual members of the pyrosome colony. With the basket-like gut
visible. Photo by Stefan Siebert, used with permission.

Many animals use sucking and blowing movement to get around. Squid and
octopuses use it, as well as certain types of jellyfish, which move like squid by sucking
water under their bell and then shooting it out. This is a pulsing jet-like movement.
Only one opening doing both the sucking and the blowing, and therefore the animal
moves in fits and starts. Not at all like the smooth, constant stream of a true jets
engine. The only animal to move with such fluid jet-like propulsion is the pyrosome.
Because each member noshes on tiny plankton, they must constantly suck water in
and over their baskets, and constantly blow waste out the hollow center. Thus they
are moving at a steady, albeit painfully slow, speed.

So they’re giant, terrifying looking, and trolling through the depths of the ocean,
waiting for you to swim in one end and get stuck. Maybe. But fortunately, in addition
to being slow moving filter feeders, they’re also delicate and fluffy. One diver
described a pyrosome saying “it felt like an exquisitely soft feather boa” [2]. And this
is why I almost cried when I saw my first wee pyrosome. Despite their improbable
nature, these horrifying giants, the spawn of the worst movie villains, are actually
delicate and fragile. The bizarre unicorns of the sea
Pyrosomes: Strange and Bioluminescent
Creatures in the Ocean
Updated on November 19, 2017

Linda Crampton

more

Linda Crampton is a writer and teacher with an honors degree in biology. She loves to study
nature and write about animals and plants.

A photo of a bioluminescent pyrosome taken off the coast of East Timor | Source

What Is a Pyrosome?

A pyrosome is a strange, gelatinous, and bioluminescent creature that is found in the ocean.
It's actually a colony of marine animals known as tunicates. Pyrosomes have fascinated
observers for a long time. The interest in the creatures has recently increased due to a
mysterious population explosion on the west coast of the United States and Canada. The
unexplained pyrosome bloom is very annoying for the fishing industry.

Tunicates are sac-like marine invertebrates. In free-living tunicates, the sac has two tubes at
the top through which water enters and leaves the animal. The animal filters plankton out of
the water, which also supplies it with oxygen.

Despite their relatively simple body as adults, tunicates have features which show that they
are related to vertebrates. The individual tunicates in a pyrosome can be seen in the photo
above. A pyrosome colony ranges from around a centimetre in length to ten metres long.

Pyrosomes are sometimes referred to as comb jellies or salps, but neither of these terms is correct.
Comb jellies are gelatinous animals which have rows of cilia (the "combs") that are used for
swimming. Salps are gelatinous tunicates that start their lives as free living organisms but later link
together to form chains.

A Beautiful Example of a Pyrosome

The free-living tunicates discussed in this article are ascidians (members of the class Ascidiacea).
They are the most common type of tunicates. Pyrosomes are thought to be related to ascidians.

Golden or ink-spot sea squirt (Polycarpa aurata) | Source

What Are Tunicates?

The tunicates that make up a pyrosome colony belong to the phylum Chordata, just as
vertebrates (including us) do. Vertebrates belong to the subphylum Vertebrata, however,
while tunicates belong to the subphylum Tunicata, which is also called Urochordata.

Tunicates are often known as sea squirts. When many of them are touched, they contract,
squirting out seawater in the process. The sac-like body of the animals is covered by a firm
but flexible layer known as a tunic. This tunic is unusual because it contains cellulose, which
is a molecule in plant cell walls. The animals are sessile, or attached to a surface and unable
to move from place to place.

Internal anatomy of an ascidian tunicate | Source

Internal Anatomy and Physiology

Tunicates are filter feeders. Seawater enters the branchial siphon of an ascidian tunicate and
travels into the sieve-like branchial basket, where food is trapped. The terminology can be
confusing because there are multiple names for the body parts. The branchial siphon is also
known as the oral, bucal, or incurrent siphon. The branchial basket is also known as the
pharyngeal basket. The slits on the basket are sometimes known as gill slits.

The tunicate feeds on the tiny plants and animals found in seawater and collectively known as
plankton. The plankton is trapped by the mucus made by the endostyle in the branchial
basket. It's then transported to the stomach and moved from there to the intestine. After
digestion has been completed and nutrients extracted from the food, feces leaves the
tunicate's body through the atrial or excurrent siphon.
Oxygen from the incoming seawater is absorbed by blood vessels in the branchial basket.
Carbon dioxide waste made by the animal is released through the excurrent siphon.

A cerebral ganglion is located between the siphons and plays the role of a very simple brain.
The animal has a heart, which periodically reverses the direction in which it pumps blood. It
also has both male and female reproductive organs and is therefore a hermaphrodite.

Anatomy of a larval ascidian tunicate | Source

The Ascidian Larva

The larva of an ascidian looks somewhat like a tadpole. It has features identical or similar to
those of vertebrates, including:

 a dorsal nerve cord along its back

 a flexible rod under the nerve cord called a notochord (which is present in human embryos
but is eventually replaced by the spine)
 a cerebral vesicle, which resembles the area where the vertebrate brain develops
 an eyespot or ocellus in the cerebral vesicle, which detects light and has similarities to the
vertebrate eye
 a statocyst in the cerebral vesicle, which is used for balance and orientation with respect to
gravity; vertebrates have a similar structure called an otolith in their inner ear

The ascidian larva maintains its form for a maximum of only a few days. It has no mouth and
doesn't feed. Its purpose seems to be to find a suitable habitat for the adult form. The larva
sticks to a rock, shell, or other solid surface head first. It then digests its tail and other
structures (including the ones that are similar to those of vertebrates) and makes new
structures to form the adult body. The regeneration abilities of the animal are impressive.
They may help researchers to understand regeneration in the human body.

Although the video below uses the word "worm" in its title, it's actually showing pyrosomes.

Glowing Creatures in the Ocean

The Pyrosome Colony

Pyrosomes are still mysterious animals. There is a lot that is unknown and puzzling about
their biology. Some facts have been discovered, however.
The individual animals in a pyrosome are known as zooids. They are tunicates but are very
small in size. The colony generally resembles a thimble in shape. The one in the photo at the
start of this article is about a centimetre long. Some colonies are much longer than an adult
human and have an opening large enough for a person to enter. There may be hundreds,
thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of zooids in a particular colony.

The zooids are connected by tissue. Some form of communication between them exists
because they can coordinate their behaviour. When one zooid emits light in bioluminescence,
they all do, for example.

Though pyrosomes are sometimes said to drift through the ocean, they do have a weak power
of propulsion. The incurrent opening of the zooids faces the ocean, but the excurrent opening
faces the cavity inside the "thimble". When the zooids release water after extracting food and
oxygen, it flows out of the opening of the pyrosome. This produces a slow form of jet
propulsion.

The zooids reproduce asexually to produce identical zooids that enlarge the colony. They
reproduce sexually to produce a group of cells that gives rise to a new colony.

Pyrosome is derived from the Greek pyro for “fire” and soma for “body.”

— Newsweek

Bioluminescence

The bioluminescence of pyrosomes is unusual compared to that shown by other animals. The
blue-green light is often sustained instead of being emitted in pulses. Due to the lack of
research about pyrosomes, the scientific paper that is often quoted in reference to their
bioluminescence was published long ago in 1990. The authors reference even older research
in their paper. The information may well be correct, but it would be nice to have additional
and more recent studies to confirm it.

According to the research, the zooid has two light organs, one on either side of the incurrent
siphon. The organs are reportedly triggered by touch or—unusually for bioluminescent
animals—by light.

In many other bioluminescent animals, the light is known to be emitted when an enzyme
called luciferase acts on a protein named luciferin. Bacteria live in some light organs and are
responsible for this reaction. Bacteria have been found in the light organs of pyrosome zooids
and luciferase has been found in their bodies. It hasn't yet been proven that the bacteria are
making the luciferase or are responsible for the light production, however.

The woman in the video below talks about the "mouth" of the creature that she's found. She later
discovered that the creature was a pyrosome and that the opening wasn't a mouth.

Pyrosomes on an Oregon Beach

There were reports of some pyrosomes in 2014, and a few more in 2015 but this year there has been
an unprecedented, insane amount.
— Olivia Blondheim, University of Oregon, in 2017

A Population Explosion

The unexplained population explosion of pyrosomes off the west coast of North America is
puzzling. They've been discovered in California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and
even Alaska. They are sometimes so dense that commercial fishing isn't possible.

The physical appearance and size of the pyrosomes is shown in the video above. They have
the typical, elongated thimble shape of other pyrosomes as well as the opening at one end.
Their body is pale orange or pink and is gelatinous. It has been described as having a
"pimply" appearance. It dries out and becomes flat if it's out of the water for too long. The
creatures are sometimes known as sea pickles.

The pyrosomes in the current North America bloom range from eight to sixty centimetres in
length. They are usually found in warmer water. A scientist at the Institute of Ocean Sciences
in Sidney, British Columbia, suspects that the creatures became stuck in an unusually warm
current that developed in the eastern Pacific between 2014 and 2016.

In May 2017, a research team from Oregon collected 60,000 pyrosomes after only five
minutes of trawling with a net. Pyrosomes fill fishing nets, stopping other creatures from
being caught. In addition, the zooids eat the zooplankton (tiny animals) that are eaten by
other animals, including shrimp, crabs, and the crustaceans that are an important food source
for fish and seabirds. Another concern is that if a change in the environment causes all of the
pyrosomes to die at around the same time, their decomposing bodies might create serious
effects for the ecosystem.

Pyrosomes are generally found in the upper layers of the water column but may occasionally be
found lower down.

Pyrosomes in Oregon

Learning More About Pyrosomes

Pyrosomes are fascinating and intriguing creatures. It would be very interesting to know more
about how the zooids in a colony communicate with each other and about how they
coordinate their behaviours. It would also be interesting to know exactly why their population
has exploded and what the consequences of this explosion will be. We need to learn more
about the biology and ecology of the creatures.

At the moment the pyrosomes aren't considered to be an invasive species, at least in British
Columbia, despite the fact that they are interfering with fisheries. The hope is that another
current will eventually carry them away. If it doesn't though, their status may change and they
may become a serious problem.

References

Tunicate and pyrosome information from ScienceDirect

Similarity of the ascidian tadpole larva ocellus or eyespot to the vertebrate eye from the NIH
(National Institute of Health)

Pyrosome bloom facts and photos from National Geographic

Millions of pyrosomes appear on the coast of British Columbia—an article from the CBC
(Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)