By Shannon Dunnigan

Biofouling can be a bunch of things…aggravating, gross, stinky, harmful, disastrous, interesting, impressive, but also comical. We retrieved one of our data loggers (sondes) from the field this week that looked like it had gone and grown a beard.

Bryozoans are generally the main culprit in the biofouling of our sondes (along with barnacles); sometimes, however, we do get some other interesting critters! Below is a colonial tunicate that likes to show up at our Fort Matanzas site in the Matanzas River of St. Augustine, FL.

Really goes to show that you never know what you may find in the estuary!