Discovery of sea squirt in Northland creates mystery for One Tree Point residents

View from the One Tree Point boat ramp towards the Whangarei Heads, near where a sea squirt (Synoicum kuranui) was found. Photos / Janelle Malpass and Michael Cunningham

A father and daughter out for a walk along a Northland beach thought they had stumbled upon a vibrant red snake of some kind.

Janelle Malpass said she and her dad were walking their dog Maple along the beach near the One Tree Point boat ramp earlier this week when a snatch of colour caught her eye at the low tide mark.

“I just saw a large, red snake-looking thing that looked very ominious.”

Malpass and her dad couldn’t see a mouth or eyes. But it appeared to have a head shaped like a snake’s and the long cylindrical body to match. She thought it was about 1.2m long or more.

“The way it was lying made it look like a snake. Neither of us wanted to get too close to it,” Malpass said.

The pair wondered if it was alive as it lay mostly motionless.

Later that day, Malpass searched the depths of Google - thinking, maybe slightly hoping, it was some kind of seaweed. While she couldn’t find anything in that category to match, she did stumble across an article about a blood-red, snake-like creature spotted burrowing into a rainforest in India.

“It looked exactly the same,” she said. “We were like could it be?”

Fortunately, the sinister looking imitator turned out to be a sea squirt. The Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) helped solve the mystery after the family got in touch.

Biosecurity New Zealand team manager of aquatic health, Dr Mike Taylor, said based on the image provided the Marine Invasives Taxonomic Service confirmed the organism was Synoicum kuranui.

The native sea squirt species lives in New Zealand waters, and was first recorded near Great Barrier Island. However, it has since been found in the North Cape, Whangaroa Harbour, Whangārei, and Fiordland areas.

Taylor said the marine animals, that feed by filtering water through their body, are commonly found on reefs at the entrance of harbours and estuaries where water movement supports a rich and diverse fauna.

“These organisms are regularly reported to Biosecurity New Zealand by members of the public.”

Two recent cases in Northland included a recreational fisher catching one of the bright red organisms while fishing off a boat off the coast of One Tree Point in December last year, and back in March 2020 when a member of the public found several long, red, fleshy organisms washed up on a beach near Manganese Point in Whangārei Heads.

They did not pose any biosecurity risk, Taylor said.

Synoicum kuranui typically forms mushroom or button-shaped colonies in areas of high tidal flow. They become elongated and sausage shaped and can grow up to 1.2m long.

“They are called sea squirts because they squirt seawater,” Taylor said.