Sludge of slimy organisms coats beaches of New England

Millions of tiny, gelatinous creatures have slimed beaches from Rye, N.H., to Hull, congealing into a slippery, tapioca-like sludge almost an inch thick.

Scientists say the invaders are called salps, transparent globular organisms that, with their stomachs, beating hearts, and placentas, resemble humans more than the miniature jellyfish they look like.

The creatures do not sting and are harmless, although they may deter beachgoers from taking one last dip in the Atlantic before cold weather sets in.

``You could get slimed pretty seriously," said Steven L. Bailey, curator of fishes for the New England Aquarium. He went to Hull on Saturday to investigate the creatures washed up on Nantasket Beach. The invasion resembled an encroaching pile of ooze about a half-mile long.

``They are amazing -- they can add 20 to 30 percent of their body length per hour."

There is no need to fear the possibility of house-sized salps, however. The creatures can grow to about a centimeter long. In optimal conditions, they can go from being born to reproducing within two days, scientists say.

The creatures are scientifically known as Thalia democratica, and attach to one another to form long colonies that have been documented in dense mats in the open ocean, one more than a mile long. They have bluish stomachs, and a nerve center that substitutes as a brain.

In Hull, residents saw both chains and individuals when the creatures began washing up on Friday, but by Saturday they had decomposed into biological sludge, Bailey said.

Salps are found around much of the world.

They have tiny hairs that propel them through the water and that create tiny currents that push microscopic plankton into their mucus feeding nets.

While they can swim, they are often at the whim of strong currents and winds.

Scientists suspect warm eddies that spun off from the Gulf Stream this year are bringing the salps to area beaches this fall.

Ten days ago, salps inundated a number of beaches in Rye, N.H., in such large amounts that one alarmed resident called 911 to report an oil slick on the beach, a Rye public safety official said yesterday.

The Globe received other calls about similar-sounding events in Hampton and Plum Island in the last two weeks.

Scientists say salps sometimes appear on area shores, but not usually north of Cape Cod.

The last big invasion was in September 1999, when salps came ashore on Southern Maine beaches, news clippings said.

``They are much more common on the Vineyard and Nantucket because they are closer to the Gulf Stream there," said G. Richard Harbison, a scientist emeritus at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who studies salps. ``And they usually happen this time of year."

Not only salps hitch a ride on the Gulf Stream. Such eddies frequently bring tropical fish to Southeastern New England.

This year an eddy may have contributed to an incursion of poisonous Portuguese man-of-war jellyfish in the region.

The salps occasionally can cause trouble, as scientists aboard the research vessel Seward Johnson in the Gulf of Maine found out three years ago.

It was such a thick mat of salps that the creatures gummed up intake valves that cool the engines and that provide water to be desalinated. The system had to be shut down temporarily.

Bailey remembered an invasion several years ago in North Carolina, when lifeguards went swimming among the creatures to prove to swimmers that to do so would be it was safe.