A big blob of gooeyness is causing a lot of excitement in Stanley Park. 
 
 Known in Latin as Pectinatella magnifica, it’s OK if you call the bryozoan found in a pond near Lost Lagoon by its less formal name — a “chunk of goo.” 
 
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 Or at least that’s how Kathleen Stormont of the Stanley Park Ecology Society describes the bryozoans that were discovered a couple of weeks ago in the biofiltration pond a few metres away from the causeway. 
 
 “It’s kind of like three-day-old Jello — a bit firm but gelatinous,” she says. 
 
 If you don’t want to be freaked out, think of it as a peeled giant lychee fruit that can grow to the size of a deflated basketball. For those who aren’t queasy, let your thoughts turn to what a brain or kidney might look like if it had evolved under water. 
 
 Only one scientific journal mentions bryozoan found in British Columbia, and that was in the Gulf Islands, the society says. More recently, a bryozoan was chanced upon in Lake Okanagan. 
 
 “They’re a colony of tiny organisms that like to hang out together,” Stormont says. “They have a very ancient lineage that hasn’t changed for hundreds of thousands of years.” 
 
 A single organism on its own is easy prey. Stick together and you’re not as likely to be eaten. “If you have a predator there’s safety in numbers,” she says. 
 
 Someone “stumbled upon” a bryozoan in the pond during a recent 24-hour Bio-Blitz, when a mass of amateur nature lovers helped a group of experts catalogue all manner of species living in the park. 
 
 “We looked at things we don’t normally look at,” says Celina Starnes, the ecology society’s public education and outreach manager. 
 
 Bryozoans are hard to spot because they are camouflaged in the murky water. 
 
 Once one was noticed, however, the pond was found to be full of them. 
 
 “It’s kind of like three-day-old Jello — a bit firm but gelatinous." - Martha Perkins 
 
 Starnes says bryozoans are fresh-water animals that are believed to have originated in the Mississippi. They’ve been migrating westward ever since. 
 
 The biofiltration pond is obviously a perfect habitat for them. It was created a dozen years ago to filter the pollutants found in the runoff from the traffic-congested causeway before they hit Lost Lagoon. 
 
 “What the bryozoans like is that there is little to no current and high nutrient levels,” she says. 
 
 Another fun find during the Bio-Blitz was goblin moss. “It looks like any old moss until you turn the lights off,” Starnes says. “It has a green luminescence.” 
 
 Stormont says the discovery of the bryozoan has been “a great education for us. There are these weird and wonderful things that exist and aren't commonly encountered.” 
 
 The results from the Bio-Blast, which was part of the Canada 150 celebration, will be uploaded to the iNaturalist.org database. 

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 Image: Vancouver Courier via YouTube 
 
 Sometimes, we are all this blob—a large, gelatinous mound sitting in a lake, begging to be left alone. Recently, one such blob was found near the Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park, Vancouver. While it might not look like something from Earth, the Blob is very much alive—and it contains multitudes. 
 
 According to the Vancouver Courier, the Stanley Park Ecology Society found the alien-looking lumps—which are actually colonies of tiny marine invertebrates called Pectinatella magnifica—in the pond back in mid-August. Upon further inspection, the team found the pond was actually rife with these weirdos. 
 
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 Pectinatella magnifica are members of the phylum Bryozoa, which dates back roughly 500 million years. Here’s how the Blob forms: one tiny Pectinella magnifica will reproduce asexually, and the process will keep repeating itself until there’s an entire colony. Since Pectinella magnifica are kind of gross and no one wants to be their friend, they have to make their own. 
 
 Gross as it may look, the Blob is Actually Good. It eats microscopic organisms in the water, filtering it as it feeds. According to the Missouri Department of Conservation, a freshwater Bryozoan presence “usually indicates good water quality.” 
 
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 Sure, this living fossil of a Blob may not be a puppy. Still, it plays an important role in its ecosystem and we should all respect it. From afar. 
 
 [Vancouver Courier]
– Pectinatella magnifica, a water-dwelling blob, has long confounded scientists trying simply to categorize them. The brown-green snotty lumps are called bryozoans, and sometimes "moss animals," "dragon boogers," and "ectoprocta," which means, "anus outside," reports Popular Science. The blobs, which are actually whole colonies of tiny organisms, look most like polyps or coral, but they're probably more closely related to mollusks. And now, they've been unearthed in a biofiltration pond near Stanley Park's Lost Lagoon in Vancouver, reports the Vancouver Courier. (See the newspaper's video on the blobs here.) “It’s kind of like three-day-old Jello—a bit firm but gelatinous,” says a member of the park's Ecology Society. The discovery is notable because bryozoan clumps have typically been found only east of the Mississippi. Scientists are currently debating whether they are invasive and whether a warming climate is helping them spread, reports National Geographic. They filter nutrients from algae, so there's a chance they harmfully alter freshwater ecology—and they can clog pipes. On the flip side, their presence suggests good water quality, reports Gizmodo. They do require water that is warmer than 60 degrees, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service published a 2012 report suggesting that climate change is helping them pop up all over the Pacific Northwest. Others wonder if we just hadn't noticed them before. (Check out this psychedelic slinky.)