Have you encountered huge gelatinous blobs floating in the water lately?

September 1, 2017 2:38 PM

That blob may in fact be a bryozoan. In Vancouver, British Columbia, bryozoans - also known as "dragon boogers" - were recently found in Stanley Park's Lost Lagoon.

Video:

What's that slimy blob in Vancouver's Stanley Park?

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: Attack of the Blobs

posted by mandolin conspiracy (26 comments total)

Those videos of people pulling them out of the water. Ugh! There's no gloves in the world thick enough for me to do that.
posted by Kevin Street at 2:52 PM on September 1, 2017

i thought it was a bryozoan, but it'ssnot
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:55 PM on September 1, 2017 [5 favorites]

You must distinguish the gelatinous blobs from the glutinous masses.
posted by Missense Mutation at 2:57 PM on September 1, 2017 [5 favorites]

You must distinguish the gelatinous blobs from the glutinous masses.

Imagine if these things were as smart as the octopus?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:03 PM on September 1, 2017

They are. But they aren't very ambitious. All they do is float there thinking deep thoughts.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 3:07 PM on September 1, 2017 [9 favorites]

The real question is, how do you lose a lagoon?
posted by The Tensor at 3:24 PM on September 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

out drive him on a la highway
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 3:26 PM on September 1, 2017 [4 favorites]

Bryozoans are really cool! They're the last major phylum to emerge from the early Paleozoic zoo, about oh, 490 million years ago, and rapidly took off to become one of the dominant groups, and their evolutionary history is quite interesting with some fascinating conflict between niche groups that affected their morphology in all kinds of ways. Scientists can use fossil bryozoans to get some interesting clues about their environment like general water temperature and turbidity. Also they really took off in the Devonian, along with a lot of other filter feeding organisms, which means world wide there was some change in the water column that made that possible (my humble theory is the evolution of plants affecting erosion and then a domino effect). (There's a great book, Bryozoan Evolution, for those interested.) IIRC people still aren't sure who they're related to or how exactly they should classified. They can form quite beautiful structures in symbiosis called bryoliths.

Oh, well, not so cool - they're really bad for kelp forests. And here, obviously.

I've got lots of bryozoan fossils as they're impossible to not find in the Paleozoic, and they can be quite beautiful. There's even one called Archimedes.

I wish I knew more about extant ones.
posted by barchan at 4:00 PM on September 1, 2017 [31 favorites]

Ow wow. Thanks barchan!
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 4:04 PM on September 1, 2017 [3 favorites]

What's the difference between a bunch of animal clones that are joined together by secreted gelatinous goo and an animal made of a bunch of cell clones joined together by secreted tissue substrates? What makes one of them a bunch of animals and one of us just one animal?
posted by clawsoon at 4:05 PM on September 1, 2017

...twenty dollars, same as in town?

(Am I doing this right?)
posted by The Tensor at 4:08 PM on September 1, 2017 [5 favorites]

For one thing, the single creature uses specialized cells for different purposes (which it can produce or kill as needed), while the colony has many identical clones all doing the same thing. (Although that distinction is a bit blurred if bryozoans can form spines like in barchan's Archimedes link.) No idea if bryzoans have anything like apoptosis, but my guess is they probably don't.
posted by Kevin Street at 4:09 PM on September 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

*oh wow, rather.

Those bryoliths are beautiful.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 4:11 PM on September 1, 2017

What's the difference between a bunch of animal clones that are joined together by secreted gelatinous goo and an animal made of a bunch of cell clones joined together by secreted tissue substrates? What makes one of them a bunch of animals and one of us just one animal?

How much sex can happen and how much of what can be reproduced, I would assume. I mean, that's half-joking but also kind of true? *laughs* Though I'm not even going to hint I understand the complexities of bryozoan reproduction but it's complicated and dramatic, I know that much.

Although some bryozoans, in both the fossil record and now, are not colonial but solitary.
posted by barchan at 4:21 PM on September 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

Complicated and dramatic sex? Do tell...
posted by clawsoon at 4:25 PM on September 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Strangely, the "Hinterland Who's Who" for the shoggoth appears to be missing from YouTube.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:39 PM on September 1, 2017 [5 favorites]

They have 3 different ways of reproducing, 1 of which is sexual and the other 2 are asexual, and use all three, behaving with necessity according to the circumstances; they produce asexually in stable conditions but can adapt by producing sexually to increase genetic variation when needed in less stable conditions.

Most but not all species - or colonies - are hermaphroditic. Freshwater species can reproduce differently than marine ones. Their embroyos have different behaviors. Looked this up so I could describe it just right, so I'll quote it, "the embryo is negative photo tactical when it is sufficiently developed to actively find a spot to attach. This means that the embryo actively searches for a place that is shaded."

They also form survival capsules called statoblasts, which can endure freezing and drying, then germinate new zooids (or buds) when conditions are favorable again.

That exhausts my knowledge of bryozoan sex.
posted by barchan at 4:42 PM on September 1, 2017 [10 favorites]

Their embroyos have different behaviors. Looked this up so I could describe it just right, so I'll quote it, "the embryo is negative photo tactical when it is sufficiently developed to actively find a spot to attach. This means that the embryo actively searches for a place that is shaded."

That's nifty as hell.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 4:49 PM on September 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

My book says it's hypothesized they do it to find a place that prevents silt from falling on the future colony.
posted by barchan at 4:51 PM on September 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

At first glance I misread the popsci link as "dragon boners" and was glad I had just sold that vintage convertible.
posted by CynicalKnight at 5:17 PM on September 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

That exhausts my knowledge of bryozoan sex

That's more than most people know about human sex.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 5:35 PM on September 1, 2017 [5 favorites]

So on the one hand it's so cool to learn more about these, while on the other hand I can't stop with the shudders because they grow on our dock ladder and I've had to scrub them off several times and now I'm just sitting here making uncomfortable noises and remembering when I stepped on one for the first time.
posted by brilliantine at 5:36 PM on September 1, 2017 [8 favorites]

Bryoliths-fracal like.
posted by Oyéah at 7:07 PM on September 1, 2017

i thought it was a bryozoan, but it'ssnot
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 4:55 PM on September 1 [4 favorites +] [!]

Basically, that's how I got my user name.
posted by notsnot at 7:19 PM on September 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

We found a couple on my in-laws' beach last weekend. I had to google to figure out what they were. We named them Blob and Brian and made up limericks about them.
posted by rebeccabeagle at 7:25 PM on September 1, 2017 [3 favorites]

Honest to God, I just TODAY was kayaking around with a pal in eastern Bull Shoals lake Mo/Ark border and ran into a bunch of these and had the "what the fuck are these" discussion.
posted by Capybara at 3:59 PM on September 2, 2017 [1 favorite]