Ever wondered what’s lurking in Lost Lagoon?
A group of volunteer nature lovers were aiming to find out while helping experts compile a list of species living in Stanley Park.
They discovered, to their surprise, a colony of blob-like creatures in Lost Lagoon.
The blobs, known as bryozoans, were found in the biofiltration pond a few metres from the Stanley Park Causeway.
“The common name for them is a moss animal and it is indeed an animal and it lives in a colony,” said Maria Egerton of the Stanley Park Ecology Society.
“They start off as these little tiny embryos and they secrete chitin that forms a soft shell around them and they also secrete a kind of a jelly and that helps them to glom together in colonies so they reproduce asexually and they form these colonies of clones.”
Most commonly found in Mississippi, Egerton said the blobs may have flown in on a bird’s foot.
She said as far as she knows the blobs are harmless.
“They’re really, really cool, very Star Trek-y,” she said.
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