Ever seen one of .....These!!!!

I have, we found these Friday night in a local lake. They have a recent rather endearing name "Lake Brains"

Nat and Chloe guiding a Bryozoan cluster to the surface.
(Nat's the one with the paddle, Chloe is uninterested)

What you are looking at is not a cluster of eggs, or an alien life form. It is actually a colony similar to coral, each individual creature measures about 1 millimeter but together as a colony can be thin and wispy or as large as two feet in diameter. If you see them in your lake feel special, there are not that many freshwater areas that have them. The Colony actually form a filter, purifying the water, they eat algae and dead organic matter. Their actual name as a colony is a Bryozoan, each individual creature inside is a Zooid. The outer casing is a protective cover while the inside is largely water.  If you locate the mouth you will find a crown of small tentacles which directs the food to the colony's mouth. They are no threat to humans and in fact are beneficial to lakes because of the amount of water they filter in a day.

There are more than 50,000 species of bryozoan world wide, of that only 50 or so are freshwater. 

One thing they are not is a new life form, the fossil record shows them dating back 500 million years, they out date the dinosaur by 270 million years, which makes them one of the oldest known life forms on the planet.

Here's a side bar, Fat people should not use paddleboards, unless you want to go swimming, this is cool if you want a closer look at these creatures in their habit, not so cool if you had intended on staying dry and have no change of clothes with you.

Here's a tip: How to tell you are to fat for a paddleboard?

                     When there is water over the top of the board, this is a bad thing, you will be going swimming very shortly.