Ryan Rustan was strolling along Huntington Beach last Tuesday when he felt a strange, squishy ‘popping’ sensation under his feet.
To his amazement, when he looked down he noticed thousands of small pink gelatinous creatures on the sand.
‘…felt little water balloons popping under my feet, super squishy. Looked down and I don’t know what these things are. Couldn’t tell if they were jellyfish or eggs but they are thousands up and down the beach. I didn’t get stung so that’s a good thing.’
While providing quite the mystery to many people checking out the photos, some believed them to be what are called ‘salp’, however expertMatt Bracken, a UC Irvine associate professor at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, pointed out that they are actually sea cucumbers, likely unearthed from recent storms in the area.
‘My guess is that the recent storms shifted the sands, exposing them,’ he told the OC Register.
Check out the pics below:
