Just a little squirt

Sea squirts are tunicates a type of sea life with a firm, rubbery outer covering called a “tunic,” from which the name derives. Sea squirts feed on algae and bacteria by sucking water in through one pipe and squirting it out a second…hence the animal’s name. WHOI ecologist Mary Carman has been studying the prodigious (and troublesome) spread of these creatures through New England waters. (Illustration by Jayne Doucette, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)