Photo by Geo Cloete Photo by Geo Cloete	Siphonophores There are 150 known species, all carnivorous and mostly oceanic - the one Geo has photographed was probably swept in with oceanic water - in common with other jelly-fish-like animals we are seeing in the Bay at the moment. They tend to exist as long chains and the jury is still out as to whether the long chains are individuals or colonies of animals, although it seems like the specialists reckon they are individuals with 'many well-integrated parts'. The generalists (Ruppert Barnes and co.) go for them being colonial and get quite poetic in their descriptions: "resemble strings of diamond or crystal chandeliers cruising through inner space". I think the picture is of a calycophoran siphonophore - they are described as having one or more swimming bells (nectophores). This is what I think the bulbous structure is at the one end of the animal. Below the swimming bells, calycophorans have what the book describes as "multiple identical units" which can detach and become free-swimming sexual "eudoxids" - this to me is the yellow fringed effort that makes up the bulk of the rest of the animal. What looks like a jelly covering to the tentacles is probably a mucous net which these sorts of animals tend to produce to catch their prey. They are hermaphroditic, capable of budding asexually, easily damaged (which makes it difficult to identify), bilaterally symmetrical and feeds on zooplankton and fish larvae.
References: Many thanks to Georgina Jones for writing up the information given. Pacific Coast Pelagic Invertebrates, D Wrobel and C Mills, 2003 Invertebrate Zoology, R Fox and R Barnes, 2004
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