Thursday, July 23, 2009

Bryozoans - large freshwater gelatinous mass size of a football


On our visit to Evergreen Lake, at Oak Openings in NW Ohio, we had a delightful walk around the park. One of the big highlights was Michael discovering a huge mass of something soft and squishy -- a huge gelatinous mass about the size of a football. Being in a freshwater lake, we weren't sure what it could be.

Before I touched it, I was sure it was a piece of old glass globe that was covered in slime. But since it was quite soft, that was definitely not a match.

When Michael tried to put it back in the water, it broke apart, and we had a little part of it, which gave me a bit of a guess in the phylum porifera -- some type of sponge.

After a bit of searching on the web, we guessed it was a bryozoan, largely based on the hints of this web site.

If anyone has a better idea of what it might be, I'd be happy to know any tips, but for now we will revel in our bryozoan discovery.

12 comments:

N said...

I beg to differ. I reckon that is most likely epiphinateous raunicitious aracditiak.

moonlight545 said...

I dunno - but we found one of these at Whiskeytown lake today (California) - Was the exact same thing - very odd. We looked up gelatinous mass in the lake and found this - lol

LB said...

I could find no Google results for epiphinateous raunictious aracditiak -- did you make that up?

Anonymous said...

It is a Bryozoan. They have been around for Billions of years. It is actualy a colony of tiny water organisims that eat planktin and similar organisims. If you puncture it or break it open, it will let out a slight poison....not harmful to humans. They were thought to be extinct and they exist in salt water as well.

woodward said...

LB:

Certainly epiphinateous raunicitious aracditiak was made up -- as that would be my sister being goofy.

Sorry for the problem. The latter post is much more accurate.

Homemom said...

We found one yesterday in TN. Thanks for the great picture.

Homemom said...

We found one yesterday in Tn. Thanks for the great pictures.

RichFamily said...

We found one today at Lake Thunderhead. Unionville Missouri. Very happy to see your blog as We were completely grossed out and a little freaked out!

RichFamily said...

We found one today at Lake Thunderhead. Unionville Missouri. Very happy to see your blog as We were completely grossed out and a little freaked out!

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Jan said...

We have a number of separate colonies, each between the size of a baseball and a softball, in our 1/4 acre pond near Greenwater, Wa. They are like firm jelly, very slimy and very weird.