---
title: Common Salp (Thalia democratica)
scientific_name: Thalia democratica
common_name: Common Salp
taxon: Salps
published: 2026-08-10T20:57:59.088Z
updated: 2026-08-10T21:22:24.683Z
tags: Common Salp, Thalia democratica, Salps, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/tunicates/salps/common-salp
---

# Common Salp (*Thalia democratica*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Salps (*Thaliacea*)
- **Size:** up to 2 cm, chains far longer
- **Depth:** 0-100 m
- **Diet:** Filter feeder
- **Activity:** Cathemeral
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Open water, drifting in the blue
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Budding, Simultaneous hermaphrodite

## How to recognise it

- small transparent barrel with two projections at the rear
- dark gut visible as a knot inside a clear body
- often in chains of linked individuals
- individuals about 2 cm

A transparent barrel about 2 cm (0.8 in) long with a dark knot of gut showing through, drifting in open water and pumping itself along by squeezing water through its own body. Most encounters are with a chain rather than an individual: dozens linked end to end, moving as one ribbon in the blue.

The species was described by Forsskål from this sea in 1775, and it is one of the fastest-growing multicellular animals known. In a bloom it can double its population in under a day, stripping the phytoplankton out of a patch of ocean and then vanishing as abruptly as it appeared.

That speed matters far beyond the animal. Salps package what they eat into dense pellets that sink fast, and a bloom pumps carbon from the surface to the deep sea faster than almost anything else in the plankton. A drifting animal that looks like a discarded piece of plastic is, at scale, part of how the ocean breathes.

## Also known as

- **English:** Common Salp, salp
- **French:** Salpe démocratique
- **Portuguese:** Salpa-do-Indo-Pacífico, ascídia
- **Japanese:** ホンヒメサルパ
- **Chinese:** 雙尾薩利亞
- **Russian:** Сальпа обыкновенная

## Scientific synonyms

- *Biphora democratica* (Forskål, 1775)
- *Biphora mucronata* (Forskål, 1775)
- *Dubreuillia cirrhosa* Lesson, 1831
- *Salpa (Thalia) democratica* Forskål, 1775
- *Salpa caboti* Desor, 1848
- *Salpa democratica* Forskål, 1775
- *Salpa democratica-mucronata* Forskål, 1775
- *Salpa mucronata* Forskål, 1775
- *Salpa spinosa* Otto, 1823
- *Thalia democratica f. typica* Sewell, 1953
- *Thalia lingulata* Blumenbach, 1798
- *Thalia mucronata* (Forskål, 1775)

## Range

Canada, FAO fishing area 67, Greece, Gulf of Mexico, Kenya, Mediterranean Sea, New Zealand, North Atlantic Ocean, North East Pacific, North Pacific Ocean, Red Sea

---

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