13 November 2018. By Voyage Leader Dr Moira Decima.
We have been lucky to find a few specimens of the largest of all salp species: Thetys vagina.
The oozooid (solitary) of this particular species is known to be able to get up to 30cm long, but we measured some specimens that actually exceeded that! Our biggest critter came in at a whopping 33.5 cm (total length, Oral-to-Atrial siphon: 31.5), which is also about 3 times larger than our most abundant friend, Salpa thompsoni.
An interesting thing about the giant T. vagina—it’s poop pellets are huge! We measured a pellet that was about 2cm2, which is about 5-10 times the size of S. thompsoni poop. As part of our work, we are measuring how fast these different sized pellets sink, to estimate how quickly they can get from the surface to the deep ocean.
Not too surprisingly, these big pellets can sink fast!
Unfortunately, the T. vagina salps are not around in large numbers. This means they are hard for us to study because we only catch one or two in some of our tows—as opposed to hundreds of S. thompsoni—but we are doing are best to find out as much as we can about these giant salps—so understudied and hard to come by but cool as!
