Are these Jellyfish eggs?

[herptrader]

Does anybody know what these are?

My best guess is that they the eggs of a jellyfish species but which one?

They are very common along the beaches of the Mornington Peninsula.

I have played with them for as long as I can remember but have never been able to work out exactly what they are. Googling around it seems I am not the only one.

 

[PMyers]

My grandfather had me believing this was whale poop for many years as a kid.

 

[Dannyboi]

I was always told by fishermen that its whale well um I think you can guess ahah horrible jokes by fishermen
They never said poop though..

 

[mattmc]

yeh man, as far as i know they are, ive seen heaps up near forster on the edge of a lake that has thousands of jellys.

 

[herptrader]

Many seem familiar with them but nobody actually seems to know what they are.

My granddaughters love to squish them between their toes.

 

[Chicken]

They seem a bit big to be an jellyfish 'egg' compared to the size of the jellyfish...

 

[richoman_3]

ROFL i love playing with these at Rosebud. we have wars with them :lol:
i was told they are some type of sea jelly ? - apparantly they give some people rasshes

 

[varanid_mike]

they are the remnants of adult jelly fish, its the more solid part of the jelly's body

 

[hailey]

there called bannana jellyfish. thats there australian nick name, they have no brain and unlike the box they do not feed on fish nore do they have tenticals- they wimm not sting. they live off plankton and are sometimes found with sand or rocks in them (they beleve this is to stop them from floating to the top and being eaten by birds. because they do not swim a good amount of them end up on the shore. most that are washed up are dead but if you find an alive one you will see it can move some what

 

[jinin]

I thought they were some sort of Jelly fish. Dad allways told me that they were shark poo.

Edit: Oh they are jellies ^^

 

[matt01]

ROFL Hey im about 99% sure they are actually a marine snails eggs, sorry to pop the whale poop, jellyfish egg bubble but yeah thats what we were told at uni during a Marine biology field trip.
Ok i looked it up and im 100% now.

Leaden Sand Snail egg-mass
Polinices sordidus

Appearance: Collar shaped sausage jelly. Hundreds of tiny dots are suspended inside the jelly. The dots are eggs.

Size: To 120mm.

Location: Found in seagrass beds and intertidal sandy to muddy zones.

Information: The Leaden Sand Snail lays eggs in a jelly matrix, which rapidly absorbs water and swell into a collar shaped sausage.

 

[HoffOff]

Yup, matts on it.
Used to love getting them at the beach when i was younger

 

[herptrader]

Thanks Matt - it has been years on and off trying to solve this puzzle.

Googling the images the Sand Snail looks like what we call moon snails. I think Moon snails are responsible for the little holes in the bivalve molluscs... the sea shells with the neat holes drilled into them? (Perhaps somebody with a bit of marine biology in their background can confirm this.)

Polinices sordidus - Google Search