The blobby little sea squirt that stowed away across the Pacific to California

The blobby little sea squirt that stowed away across the Pacific to California

In 2023, biologists Lauren Stefaniak and Marie Nydam had time to kill before their university workshop on marine invertebrates began, so they drove to a marina not far from Los Angeles to gather organisms for their students to study. They strolled along floating docks, pausing periodically to sit down or to lie on their stomachs and pluck an assortment of small creatures from the water. Stefaniak, a marine scientist at Coastal Carolina Universit…