The little town of Seaside, Oregon has a problem: thousands of sea cucumbers have washed up on its beaches after a swell event paired with a lower-than-average tide pushed them ashore to die.
Tiffany Boothe, the assistant manager of the Seaside Aquarium, told the Associated Press that the gooey little animals usually burrow into the sand along the low tideline, but on Tuesday, the angry sea pulled them from their burrows.
“They are literally littering the tideline,” Boothe said.
The sea cucumbers, which are a species called Leptosynapta clarki, are more commonly referred to as skin breathing sea cucumbers, a name that must’ve been thought of by the most unimaginative person in the world. Most of the washed-up ones are about a half-an-inch long, but they can grow up to six inches. It’s not terribly uncommon for events like this to happen — sometimes, depending on the weather and tide patterns, it can occur a few times a year — but this is a particularly large number. Boothe hasn’t seen this many on the beach for years.
The little animals aren’t able to get back into the sea on their own (it ain’t easy being a sea cucumber), so they will likely dry up and die on the sand since birds don’t eat them. Their bodies will, at least, provide nutrients to wonderful, and not-at-all annoying, little creatures like sand fleas.
Since they’re mostly made of goo, it shouldn’t take long for them to become one with the sand. Boothe thinks that the majority will have returned to the earth by as soon as Thursday, but for a few days the beach in Seaside will be a little gooier than usual.
