Pink Sea Squirt

General information

The Pink Sea Squirt size will typically range between 5 to 18 cm but occasionally have been seen to reach to 30 cm. Found in different shades of pink. The body is ovoid and is attached to the substratum by the left side. Has an oral siphon and an atrial siphon half the length of the body used to eliminate waste products — the pink sea-squirt lives attached to rocks, wrecks or shells. This species has a rather long lifespan, some of them living up to 7 years old. The Pink Sea Squirt is found in deeps between 5 meters to depths of 200 meters deep. Sea squirts often form colonies that look like grapes or rubbery blobs on the seafloor. 

Sea squirt ejects water from the siphon as a response to touch or when pulled out of the water and that is how they got their name “sea squirt”.

The sea squirt is a filter feeder. It absorbs water with edible particles through the siphon and separates plankton and algae from the water in the pharynx and lower parts of the digestive system.

Sea squirts will reach sexual maturity within a few weeks - they have both types of reproductive organs. They release eggs and sperm cells directly into the water, where they mix and merge with sperm cells and eggs of other sea squirts (self-fertilization happens rarely).

Fertilized eggs float as a part of zooplankton from 12 hours to three days. Larvae have numerous anatomical features of vertebrates, and they look like tadpoles. Shortly after hatching, larvae migrate to the ocean floor to find a suitable spot where they will spend the rest of their life, attached to the substrate.

Found in the Atlantic Ocean from Norway to the Mediterranean Sea, in the North Sea and the English Channel.

Natural enemies of sea squirts are eels, large fish, snails, starfish, and crustaceans