One December morning in 2019, a storm tore up the sand at Drakes Beach, in California, United States, revealing something no one expected to find on the shore.
Thousands of pink, soft sea worms with a shape that left little to the imagination were stranded among the rocks.
They are called Urechis unicinctus, better known as “penis fish”. They have lived buried in U-shaped tunnels for more than 300 million years, and in Asia they are considered a delicacy: they are eaten raw, fried, or as sashimi, and in some Korean markets they are even called “try not to laugh”.
Despite their bewildering shape, they are not dangerous at all. They are completely harmless to humans, but in the United States no one had ever seen them like this, in broad daylight, and by the thousands.
Experts explain that the El Niño phenomenon stirred up the seafloor so much that it unearthed creatures that had spent centuries hidden beneath the sand. What was clear is that no beachgoer in California expected to encounter such a scene upon arriving at the beach.