Molgula manhattensis

Charlotte Bolton Same Torquay reef - Polycarpa pomaria? Sorry, not a great view down the siphons...

David Kipling Big thing? Overall colour would suggest that, and if massive then for sure.

Charlotte Bolton 3-5cm (she guesses, having not made any notes at the time), based on the context in the uncropped pic. Definitely in the vicinity of the 5cmH by 3cmW given on Habitas...

David Kipling Sounds right - pomaria is one of the unusually big leathery ones (ignore styela).

Charlotte Bolton Cheerses. More grist to the Devon Seasearch mill :-)

Wilfried Bay-Nouailhat Hi, P. pomaria has coloured siphons without lobes. I think it is some molgula

David Kipling Do you think those are lobes, as opposed to silt or crud?

Wilfried Bay-Nouailhat Hi David, The size of the lobes of this species is quite variable so they can be more or less conspicuous from one specimen to the other. Here is a detail of a siphon with well developped lobes which I think comes from the same Molgula species.

David Kipling Interesting, I see what you mean! My mistake for looking at Charlotte's picture and assuming it was crud! What species do you think yours is? I have the 1969 Monniot book and all that has done is make me record them all as Molgula sp. :)

Wilfried Bay-Nouailhat I think that in Monniot it is Molgula manhattensis, but to say the truth I haven't check yet. But, nowadays, some specialists begin to argue about the presence of this species in Brittany.

Charlotte Bolton It was a fairly silty reef but Wilfried's picture is a pretty good match... I despair of getting the hang of squirts!

Becky Hitchin One day at Reculver, low shore boulders were absolutely covered by squirts, metres and metres of almost complete coverage. That was a few months ago, never seen them again!

David Kipling What species do you think they are/were? There's lots of silt on them, I assume not stuck? Dendrodoa?

Becky Hitchin The "local" wisdom is that all squirts covered in silt are Molgula manhattensis, but I'm trying to start going back through old records and photos to try and work out if that's remotely true. These look much more like Dendrodoa to me, but I've never seen such a huge amount all together

David Kipling Reculver is just normal shoreline, it's not an estuary or anything is it? Ie not variable salinity?

Becky Hitchin Just normal. It's our second big D. vex hotspot actually. Just a lovely sandstone / london clay coastline

David Kipling ... covered with slime ...

Becky Hitchin vomitaceous shoreline

David Kipling Which biotope code is that?

Becky Hitchin LS.LMx.Dvom

David Kipling LS.LMx.Lmao surely?

Becky Hitchin LS.Lmx.Vmao?

David Kipling Euwww.....

Becky Hitchin LS.LMx.Euwww would also work