La Pila de la Barrilla or Playa Chica woke up this Saturday, March 25, full of "sea cucumbers" or pyrosomes, which have given a special color to the sea in the area.
Barbarella Silke Buchner has recorded with her camera the large colony that filled the area and wanted to share it with the readers of La Voz. "Hundreds of marine cucumbers (pyrosomes) have arrived at Playa Chica this morning. And there were thousands more in the ocean that I saw while diving," explained Barbarella.
Pyrosomes, genus Pyrosoma, are free-floating colonial thaliacean tunicates that generally live in the upper layers of the open ocean in warm seas, although some can be found at greater depths. Pyrosomes form cylindrical or cone-shaped colonies with hundreds or thousands of individuals, known as zooids. Colonies vary in size from less than a centimeter to several meters in length. They are commonly called "sea cucumbers".
Pyrosomes are planktonic, which means that their movements are largely controlled by currents, tides, and waves in the oceans. However, on a smaller scale, each colony can move slowly by the process of jet propulsion, created by the coordinated beating of the cilia in the branchial baskets of all the zooids, which also create feeding currents.