---
title: Chain Salp (Pegea confoederata)
scientific_name: Pegea confoederata
common_name: Chain Salp
taxon: Salps
published: 2026-08-10T20:57:59.097Z
updated: 2026-08-10T21:19:57.865Z
tags: Chain Salp, Pegea confoederata, Salps, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/tunicates/salps/chain-salp
---

# Chain Salp (*Pegea confoederata*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Salps (*Thaliacea*)
- **Size:** up to 10 cm
- **Depth:** 0-200 m
- **Diet:** Filter feeder
- **Activity:** Cathemeral
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Open water
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Budding, Simultaneous hermaphrodite

## How to recognise it

- large soft transparent barrel, up to 10 cm
- body wall thin and slack rather than firm
- chains of linked individuals, sometimes a meter long
- only ever in open water, never on the reef

A big soft salp, up to 10 cm (4 in) long, with a body wall so slack and clear that a diver's torch passes straight through it. Chains of linked individuals can run a meter or more, drifting as a loose transparent rope in midwater.

Salps alternate between two forms, and this is where the chains come from. A solitary animal buds off a string of clones that stay joined and travel together; those in turn produce solitary young, and the cycle repeats. It is a way to go from one animal to thousands while the food lasts, without waiting for a mate.

Despite the jellyfish look, salps are tunicates, and their larvae have a notochord - the stiffening rod that defines our own phylum. This drifting bag of water is a closer relative of the diver watching it than of anything it drifts among.

## Also known as

- **French:** Salpe Pégée, Salpe enroulée
- **German:** Salpe
- **Portuguese:** Salpa-da-Califórnia, ascídia
- **Japanese:** モモイロサルパ
- **Russian:** Сальпа цепочная

## Scientific synonyms

- *Biphora confoederata* (Forskål, 1775)
- *Pegea confederata* (Forskål, 1775)
- *Pegea octofora* (Cuvier, 1804)
- *Salpa (Pegea) confoederata* Forskål, 1775
- *Salpa confoederata* Forskål, 1775
- *Salpa dolium* Quoy & Gaimard, 1834
- *Salpa femoralis* Quoy & Gaimard, 1833
- *Salpa informis* Quoy & Gaimard, 1824
- *Salpa octofora* Cuvier, 1804
- *Salpa quadrata* Herdman, 1888
- *Salpa scutigera* Cuvier, 1804
- *Salpa vivipara* Péron & Lesueur, 1807

## Range

Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean Sea - Eastern Basin, New Zealand, North Atlantic Ocean

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/tunicates/salps/chain-salp)*
*Updated: August 10, 2026*