BOLIVAR PENINSULA, Texas — Another mystery of the sea washed up recently on the Bolivar Peninsula.
Julie Prejean snapped photos of the weird, white wormy thing she spotted on Crystal Beach last week. She shared them on Bolivar Beachcombers Facebook page to ask for help identifying it.
Dozens of commenters posted their best guesses, some less serious than others.
"That’s a notouchy," Deanna Sheffield said.
"I thought that first picture was a melted poodle," Donna Miller joked.
"Umbilical cord from a Chupacabra, they go to beach to have their babies," added Clarence Martin.
Others suggested intestines, an umbilical cord or a shipworm.
Prejean said she did a little research and thinks it could be a shipworm. We decided to dig further.
According to the smart people at Harvard, the naval shipworm, or Teredo navalis, isn't actually a worm at all. It's a marine mollusk with a long body and a reduced shell that resembles a helmet on one end.
The shipworm uses the helmet-like shell to scrape off wood particles so they can burrow inside, which explains why they're referred to as termites of the sea. They can do a lot of damage to ships, piers, dikes and other wooden structures. Naval shipworms are typically about a foot long but can grow up to 20 inches in tropical waters, according to the Texas Invasive Species Institute.
The giant shipworm is the stuff of nightmares. These elusive creatures had been called the unicorn of mollusks because scientists had never seen a live one. That changed in 2017 when a three-foot giant shipworm was discovered in the Philippines. It was smelly, black and slimy with a similar helmet-like shell on one end and a y-shaped siphon on the other. It sucks in water through one branch of the Y before spitting it out the other.
We sent Prejean's photo to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department but they don't think it's a shipworm.
"That would be the World’s Largest Shipworm! I’ve never seen one longer than a few inches. Plus, their diameter is less than one inch and the thing in the photo is bigger than that," Mark Fisher, the TPWD's Science Director of Coastal Fisheries, said. "Shipworms are considered to be invasive but they’ve been here for 100+ years."
Fisher believes it's likely an intestine but said he can't make a positive ID from a photo.
Other sea creatures found on Texas beaches
You never know what you might come across on Texas beaches. In recent months, we've told you about blue button jellyfish, sea dragons and the infamous "hell naw fish."
The Galveston Bay Area Chapter of the Texas Master Naturalist reported recent sightings of a porpita porpita also called a blue button jellyfish a few weeks ago.
The sea creatures resemble jellyfish, but their stings are more like a Portuguese man-o-war. It has two main body parts with bright blue, turquoise, and yellow tentacles.
Experts warn they will become more popular through the summer so if you see one, make sure you don’t touch it.
In May, it was blue sea dragons making headlines when a tourist spotted a few of them on the shore of Mustang Island near Corpus Christi.
The tiny creatures are strangely beautiful but their stings can pack a punch! That's because their favorite meal is the Portuguese man-o’-war. The blue dragons ingest, store and concentrate their prey's stinging cells so their own sting is more powerful.
Remembering the "big pile of nope" from April? Patricia Ducote shared the photo snapped by her friend Brandy Artall on the Bolivar Beachcombers Facebook page.
She asked followers if anyone knew what the creature is and some of the comments were pretty funny.
The actual answer from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department wasn't nearly as fun. "Those are the gills and gill arches of a fish that someone probably caught and filleted. I cannot identify the species, but it is most likely a large sport fish," they told us when we sent them the picture.
A woman picking up shells on Crystal Beach along the Bolivar Peninsula back in January also spotted something unexpected.
The dead creature with sharp teeth was kinda creepy, but Suzanne Choate Arceneaux was curious to find out what it was so she shared a photo on Facebook.
One commenter dubbed it a "hell naw fish" and another said it was "straight outta the depths of hell."
Mark Fisher, the TWPD Coastal Fisheries Science Director, said it was likely a snapper eel, which is “somewhat common” in Galveston Bay.