Weird blob found on beach

This week’s occasional column “weird stuff found on the beach” is dedicated to an unwanted visitor on a local beach.

Reader Andy from Cowes was on a regular walk when he came across this blob.

“I thought I'll send them in and see if Mike or someone can identify the creature,” Andy said.

“It was alive and moving, would retreat back into its hole and pop back out again, maybe feeding?”

Resident expert Mike Cleeland said the creature was another ascidian, “this time a sea vase” or ciona intestinalis, which means “pillar of intestines” because of its soft, translucent body.

“And bad news, they’re an introduced marine pest,” said Mike, the education officer at Bunurong Coast Education.

“Bilge water coming in from overseas ships has a lot to answer for. If they were made to pay for cleaning up the mess they made, it wouldn’t be quite such an obscenely profitable industry.”

According to the report Exotic Marine Pests in Westernport ciona intestinalis was identified for the first time in the bay about 2000.