‘Large chunk of fat’ washed up on Myrtle Beach? Visitor turns to Reddit for answer

The beaches in the Myrtle Beach area are home to many organisms that are not always easily identifiable, especially when you’re not local.

But when one local didn’t know what had washed up on the beach after a storm, the Reddit user took to the social media platform to figure it out.

“Found on the beach near Myrtle Beach, SC,” freeeicecream said in the post. “We just had a big storm. It’s very firm and breaks apart smoothly. Seems organic. Hypothesis is it’s a large chunk of fat.”

The post garnered more than 8,000 upvotes and 1,000 comments on the app.

Another user said it was sea pork, which freeeicecream agreed with after doing some research online.

The Sun News reached out the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources to confirm.

Erin Weeks, a spokeswoman for department, said several biologist agreed the object in the user’s photos is sea pork or Aplidium stellatum.

“Sea pork is a type of tunicate, which are comprised of not one organism but many organisms living together (similar to coral),” she said in an email.

Weeks added that sea pork feeds on plankton and are usually spotted after storms.

“Because they’re not strong swimmers, currents can strand them along the shoreline,” she said. ”When they die and begin to lose their coloring, they start to resemble the fatback for which they’re named.”

This story was originally published April 25, 2022 at 1:18 PM.