Dailymail
Many more photos at the link.
Beach-goers said they had not seen the likes of it, why, it is like an alien invasion. They described them as alien eggs and alien hairballs and unidentified floating objects.
Scarlett de Villers walks the beach every day,
It was a windy day with a very high tide. I picked one up and squeezed it and it was so squishy - but I wasn't sure if it was alive and was worried I might hurt anything inside!' she told the Daily Mail. 'It struck me how perfectly shaped they all were and how green and alive they looked.
Alistair Poore, Associate Professor School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of NSW says it is probably a rare type of living green algae that has been seen in only a handful of times around the world.
University of New South Wales, I suppose, on account of this being Australian but for a minute there it looked not safe for work.
Then the associate professor delivers my favorite quote, says Alistair,
I’ve seen similar things - sometimes dead sea grass can roll around and form balls like underwater tumbleweeds but that’s made of dead material and these look to be living,' he told The Manly Daily.
'It is a habit known as "aegagropilious", where the algae is free living (not on rocks) and forms into spherical balls.The Mail article contains a box that explains the questions the article raises, beginning.
The balls are thought to be an extremely rare species of filamentous green algae.The explanation in the box ends with as much uncertainty as certainty.
It's unknown why the algae forms into balls. One hypothesis is that a ball-shape helps protect the algae from hungry fish, another that it may help them roll back into the water and avoid drying out when they wash ashore.Breathless.
The whole thing is breathless invasion of the rare ocean moss balls. It explains nothing clearly and its added explanation explains nothing except moss balls are known.
If this were an article in Smithsonian then readers would respond with precise knowledge and experience that advances the discussion with intimate insight, but this is the Mail. What do the Mail's reader say in comments?
• Okay now I'm going to have nightmares about green balls.
• Just wait till they start to hatch.
• They are Obama's balls. He lost them 6 years ago.
• Seems to me that the first thing scientist would do is collect them, quarantine them, then slice one open and find out what's in them!
• We wrecked the planet..why not give someone else a chance.
• GET OUT A DAM MICROSCOPE AND LOOK AT IT.. DUMBAZZ!
• Here is a unique outlook on this dilemma...WHY DOESNT A SCIENTIST STUDY IT UNDER A MICROSCOPE?I know what these are. I owned similar moss balls before. The freshwater version. Put me off the idea of introducing moss and algae forms into the tank altogether. This and another Thai species turned out to be quite impossibly invasive. I wanted to do things with the tank. The Thai moss still is a serious problem. The ball moss was okay for awhile, from a designer tank point of view, but that's it. Now that I'm thinking about it, another species was worse. It came with the Thai moss and it formed a wire-thin chain of interlinked segments and grew impressively. If a link broke it grew two new ones. Like kudzu, it grew visibly everyday. I could get rid of great masses of of interlinked lacy chain link plants but it would be impossible to track down and destroy the very last filament-link. But I did.
These balls are common in the world of aquarium plants. Although not a plant particularly useful in the Takashi Amano style of natural underwater landscaping it was nonetheless part of the whole plant explosion that Amano facilitated. Designers are interested in species that oxidate with visible bubbles in response to intense lighting.
[aquarium plants moss balls]
Ebay.
99¢
Liveaquaria.com
$5.99
overview
The Moss Ball is a spongy velvet-like green algae ball that in the wild is found around Japan and Northern Europe. They were once thought to be extremely slow growing, but recent studies suggest that the growth can be accelerated by providing more nutrients. In its natural habitat, they are moved around by undercurrents and sink or rise in order to receive plenty of light to carry out photosynthesis.
The Moss Ball requires moderate to high lighting, approximately 3 watts per gallon provided by full spectrum (5000-7000K) bulbs. The temperature of the water should be between 72°-82°F, with an alkalinity of 3-8 dKH and a neutral pH.
The Moss Ball propagates by division. It starts with a division line which progresses to the splitting off of a smaller new Moss Ball.Aquariumplants.com
Cladophora aegagropila is an aquatic moss that is slowly formed into a ball over a long period of time. Originating in very cold rivers and lakes throughout Northern Europe and Japan these Marimo Balls or Moss Balls as they are more commonly take long periods of time to form. Cladophora aegagropila will not cause algae to form in your tank. In fact, Marimo Balls will do the opposite by taking nutrients out of the water. Moss Balls are a different type of algae than those that normally form in an aquarium and are very slow growing. Cladophora aegagropila comes in a range of sizes with the small size in the 3-4 cm range and the XL size in the 10 cm range. Marimo Balls are very easy to decorate with and use for aquascaping.
4 per order, $16.49
8 comments:
Triffids!
It's the offspring from THE BLOB!
I once put less than a teaspoon of duckweed into a 55 long.
I think I had angelfish at the time.
Two weeks later I got sick and tired of trying to control the stuff and I removed it all, permanently.
Damn duckweed.
At one point I had a colony of tubiflex worms living in the gravel.
That was kind of mind-freaking.
One time I saw some kind of a disgusting insect-like looking thing crawling around the flanks of one of my cichlids like he was going to make it his bitch.
Probably some life stage of some hideous parasite.
It suffered before it died.
I made certain of that.
One time I was invited to a dinner party and I was seated next to this very nice guy. On the meek and mild side. Bookworm type. Clark Kent without the shoulders.
He tells me he's an entomologist.
I say, "Oh, you study insects."
He says, "Yeah, I study them . . . so I can . . . KILL THEM!!!
He said it like he was some kind of a maniac.
I was glad I got seated next to him.
Great post. Reminds me of a pet peeve. Namely, going to an expensive resort in Mexico/Caribbean. Brochure shows sandy white beaches. But when we get there, what do we see? Seaweed or Kelp or whatever the hell it is.
Why wasn't that in the brochure? Huh?
Of course its not on the whole beach, and they do rake it off, here and there. But I don't want to swim in seaweed when I'm paying exorbitant prices or walk along a shore covered with slimy seaweed bits.
Post a Comment