Just prior to completing the first water column exploration transect of Dive 01 of the Seascape Alaska 3 expedition, the team captured this beautiful imagery of a larvacean inside of its mucus “house.” Larvaceans are solitary, free-swimming tunicates that produce these fragile mucus houses to help filter small particles (food) from the water. The larvacean lives inside of its house until the mucus filter becomes clogged, at which point the animal will abandon the house, swimming away to build a new, and unclogged, structure. Given the number of white particles (marine snow) seen in the image, this house was quite full and was vacated while we examined it closer!
Larvacean
Image courtesy of NOAA Ocean Exploration, Seascape Alaska. Download larger version (jpg, 1.4 MB).

Just prior to completing the first water column exploration transect of Dive 01 of the Seascape Alaska 3 expedition, the team captured this beautiful imagery of a larvacean inside of its mucus “house.” Larvaceans are solitary, free-swimming tunicates that produce these fragile mucus houses to help filter small particles (food) from the water. The larvacean lives inside of its house until the mucus filter becomes clogged, at which point the animal will abandon the house, swimming away to build a new, and unclogged, structure. Given the number of white particles (marine snow) seen in the image, this house was quite full and was vacated while we examined it closer!.