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A huge, menacing underwater snake has spotted the diver
and seems ready to wrap him in its coils.
For a moment we react with fear: it is gigantic, 5 or 6 meter long!
White translucent, almost not belonging to this world: like an alien
come from who knows where...
Then we get closer and inspect him intrigued. The light beam
passes from side to side:
it is not a sea monster given birth from the mind of an imaginative writer;
it is not even a single animal.
It is a really awesome colony of planktonic tunicates: hundreds, thousands,
of small, gelatinous animals who all gather
to form this huge snake and are carried away
by the current motion and subtropic, oceanic tides.
An impressive sight!
This colony is particularly developed and is at the
heyday of its biological cycle.
Smaller colonies of other species of tunicates seem almost escort it.
After a few days we come back to look for it:
now degraded, it has changed his color in a beautiful, deep pink
and fish feast, eating one by one the individual tunicates
by the segments fallen to the bottom.
Now their biological cycle is concluded and in the next season
new, white colonies will return to sail the oceans.
The Rainbow Warrior is getting closer...