Purple Snake-thing from Alaska
July 9, 2007
From: Melissa Brook Steward
Hello,
My name is Melissa Steward, and I live in Klawock, Alaska. I was out canoeing one evening right near the shore, and I saw a 14-inch, purple snake-type thing swimming on the surface of the water. As I looked around, I saw there were more of them, all swimming quite fast upon the surface. They were bright purple, had heads just like a snake, long, slender flat bodies, and little tiny hairs or legs lining both sides of their bodies. It looked like it had the texture of a sunfish, all soft and squishy, on the top, but I didn't get to see its underside. Can you tell me what this is? I have looked up every kind of marine worm, eel, slug, nudibranch... that I could find, and none of them looked like what I saw.
Locality: Big Salt Lake Channel, Klawock, Prince of Wales Island , 15-25 feet, Alaska, USA, Pacific, 15 June 2006, rocky shoreline, salt water, fairly clear. Length: 12-14 inches. No photo.
Melissa
melissasteward@gmail.com
Steward, M.B., 2007 (Jul 9) Purple Snake-thing from Alaska. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/20124Dear Melissa,
What you have described is most certainly polychaete worm. Paging through Lamb & Hanby (2005) the NW Pacific invertebrate Bible, there are two species that can be purple and reach a foot in length. These would be Hololepida mana, the Giant Fleshy Scaleworm, and Nephtys sp., the Goddess Worm.
Hope this helps,
Dave Behrens
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