Transparent Mermaids Purse (see additional note on 28/4/2010: actually a Sea squirt - Corella parallelogramma)

I was walking on the beach one sunny day in April after a big storm when I found a lot of fresh green sea lettuce with these white-ish transparent mermaids purses on it with the babies still inside but without the curly things on them ( not a dogfish egg sac / mermaids purse)

We searched all over the internet but could not find out what they are!!

This is two of them in a bucket. They are still attached to the sea lettuce. We are going to ask someone to identify them.

This one's egg sac was already broken and it came out. It is under developed a bit like a
huge transparent tadpole.

28/4/2010 I finally found out what this is :) It is a

Sea squirt - Corella parallelogramma (with varying appearances)

Here is a link to one of the websites

http://www.vattenkikaren.gu.se/fakta/arter/chordata/tunicata/corepara/corepa1e.html

We were looking through a book called Great British Marine Animals (2nd Edition) by Paul Nayor and found it on page 198. I was actually getting some information for a schoool project on the fishing industry and we have to do a presentation on one species. I also designed my own marine life wordsearch.

Another link is http://nlbif.eti.uva.nl/bis/tunicata.php?menuentry=soorten&id=25#

Extract:

Description

External appearance
Solitary, body oval to subquadrate and laterally compressed, up to about 50 mm high, attached to substratum by a small part of the base. Test firm, thin, smooth and almost transparent. Mantle with yellow, white and red markings, clearly visible through the test.

Characters
Oral siphon with 6-8 lobes and placed terminal; atrial siphon 6-lobed and located close to the oral siphon. The siphons bear red ocelli. There are numerous long, simple branchial tentacles. Branchial sac with numerous rows of stigmata; no folds; with up to 27longitudinal bars on each side but without papillae at the intersections with transverse vessels. Stigmataare of variable length, curved, and arranged in subquadrate spirals. Gut to the right of the branchial sac; stomach with longitudinal folds. Male and femalegonads are diffusely distributed on both sides of thegut loop (C. parallelogramma morphology).

Habitat
Attached to hard substrata; from shallow water to depths of 200 metres;

Distribution
From Norway to the Mediterranean.

Other names are Ascidia parallelogramma and Corella halli.