Beachgoers walking along Point Reyes National Seashore near San Francisco, along the Northern California coast, were in for a surprise over the weekend when an unusual phenomenon was spotted in the water.
Purple-colored waves rolled onto the shore near Point Reyes on May 3, 2026, leaving visitors amazed at the surreal sight.
Thankfully, the unnatural yet beautiful color was a biological phenomenon, not the result of pollution or the dumping of dyes into the ocean.
Sharing an image of the purple waves on social media, the West Marin Feed explained that the purple hue was caused by a bloom of juvenile salps.
What Are Salps?
Salps are small gelatinous invertebrates that are found in warm seas, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere, according to Britannica. The organisms have transparent, barrel-shaped bodies, girdled by bands of muscle, and are open at each end.
Often luminescent, salps move by rapidly contracting their muscles to shoot jets of water from their bodies, which helps propel them through the ocean.
These creatures survive by feeding on microscopic planktonic plants and animals.
On May 3, 2026, a massive number of juvenile salps washed ashore, which resulted in the striking purple waves, according to The West Marin Feed.
Although they are commonly mistaken for jellyfish, salps do not have stinging tentacles.
Interestingly, while salps may look similar to jellyfish, they are, in fact, the same phylum (a taxonomic rank used to classify organisms with significant developmental or anatomical similarities) as humans, according to the Catalina Island Marine Institute.
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Previous Instances of Purple Waves
Although rare, salps have also appeared along the West Coast earlier, creating purple-colored waves that have puzzled both visitors and scientists.
In August 2015, mysterious purple waves crashed on the shore at Clatsop Beach in Oregon. What deepened the mystery was that only small chunks of the tideline took on the unique shade of purple, while the rest of the beach sported its usual colors.
Back then, the purple waves were spotted in Washington as well.
Scientists explained that in its early larval stages, salps have a spine, which is lost as it evolves into an adult, making it related to vertebrates.
However, scientists failed to unravel why juvenile salps create the vibrant purple as they transform into adults.
In 2012, a record volume of salps crowded the waters off California. Scientists caught an average of 30,000 salps every time they dragged a trawl through the water. Some hauls even caught half a million salps.
Scientists said the bumper bloom of salps that year was due to natural oceanwide changes, such as temperature shifts.
Over the weekend, the rare and mystifying sight of purple waves was another reminder of how nature continues to surprise scientists and visitors.
“gelatinous creatures related to fish”
Er, wut? Only in the sense that all life on earth is “related”. “related” among lifeforms only makes sense when used relatively, e.g., salp are more closely related to “real” fish like salmon or halibut than to “true” jellyfish in the Cnidaria phylum.
“Interestingly, while salps may look similar to jellyfish, they are, in fact, the same phylum (a taxonomic rank used to classify organisms with significant developmental or anatomical similarities) as humans”
This is like saying they’re on the same planet as humans. And in modern taxonomy morphological categorization is out, cladistics is in.
“jellyfish”, as well as “fish”, are polyphyletic terms. While biologists sometimes talk about “true” jellyfish in the Cnidaria phylum, in popular parlance the term “jellyfish” is also applied to chordates such as salps, doliolids, and pyrosomes, as well as the comb jellies in the Ctenophora phylum.
Here are some “fish” in popular parlance: jellyfish, starfish, cuttlefish, crayfish, and silverfish. There are also hagfish which, while vertebrates, are only distantly related to common fish like tuna … those “real” fish are far more closely related to sharks (which everyone knows “aren’t really fish”), dolphins, whales, and humans (all mammals) than to hagfish.
Salps are actually artificial reefs 😉