---
title: Giant Salp (Thetys vagina)
scientific_name: Thetys vagina
common_name: Giant Salp
taxon: Salps
published: 2026-08-08T19:41:08.727Z
updated: 2026-08-08T20:15:18.364Z
tags: Giant Salp, Thetys vagina, Salps, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/tunicates/salps/giant-salp
---

# Giant Salp (*Thetys vagina*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Salps (*Thaliacea*)
- **Size:** up to 30 cm
- **Depth:** 0-200 m
- **Diet:** Filter feeder
- **Activity:** Cathemeral
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Open water, drifting in the blue
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Budding, Simultaneous hermaphrodite

## How to recognise it

- transparent barrel drifting in open water, gut visible as a dark knot
- two soft projections at the rear end
- often in chains of linked individuals metres long
- length up to 30 cm

A transparent barrel drifting in open water, up to 30 cm (12 in) long and the largest salp in the world, with two soft projections trailing from the rear and a dark knot of gut visible through the body wall. Divers meet it in the blue rather than over the reef, usually as something that looks like a discarded plastic bag until it pulses.

Movement and feeding are the same act: muscular bands squeeze water through the body and out the back, driving the animal forward while a mucus net strains out everything edible. The life cycle alternates between a solitary animal and a chain - the solitary form buds off a string of clones that stay linked and swim together, sometimes for metres, and those in turn produce solitary young. Salps are tunicates, so despite the jellyfish appearance this is a closer relative of a fish than of anything it drifts among. Blooms of them can strip the plankton from a patch of ocean in days, and their fast-sinking pellets carry carbon to the seabed.

## Also known as

- **English:** thetys salp, Twin-sailed Salp, Vagina salp
- **French:** Grande Thetys, Salpe Thétys
- **Italian:** salpa maggiore
- **Spanish:** Sálpido vagina
- **Turkish:** Çifte Yelkenli Salp
- **Portuguese:** Salpa-rabo-de-peixe, ascídia
- **Dutch:** schedesalp
- **Japanese:** オオサルパ
- **Russian:** Гигантская сальпа

## Scientific synonyms

- *Salpa (Thetys) vagina* Tilesius, 1802
- *Salpa costata* Quoy & Gaimard, 1825
- *Salpa herculea* Dall, 1872
- *Salpa neapolitana* Della Chiaje, 1841
- *Salpa tilesii* Cuvier, 1804
- *Tetys costata*
- *Tetys tilesii*
- *Thetys costata* (Quoy & Gaimard, 1825)
- *Thetys tilesii* (Cuvier, 1804)

## Range

Canada, FAO fishing area 67, Mediterranean Sea, New Zealand, North Atlantic Ocean, North East Pacific, North Pacific Ocean

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/tunicates/salps/giant-salp)*
*Updated: August 8, 2026*