On Collier beaches like Sea Gate, it looks like someone took a giant pot of spaghetti and dumped it all over the beach.
Beachgoers were left wondering what a stringy, clear substance was and where it came from.
“It looks like the inside of Dubai chocolate," said Isabella Alvarado. "It looks like spaghetti.”
"I thought it was going to be, like, squishy, but, like, it breaks so easily," said Taylor Titcomb.
"After we touched it, we thought our hand was going to turn red and die," said Kelly Fagan Kohler.
Florida Gulf Coast University professor James Douglass said the stringy substance lining the shore is manatee grass and it’s safe to touch.
He said it’s a sea grass that gets bleached by the sun on the surface of the water.
"It doesn't even look like seagrass anymore," Douglass said. "It always confuses people when these white straws wash up on the beach, because it looks so different from the original seagrass that it was.”
It left a lot of people puzzled.
“I go to the beach like every day, and I’ve never seen it my whole life," Titcomb said.
Douglass said it washes up based on the tides and winds.
It can also be a sign of a changing ecosystem.
"One is that somewhere the seagrass is doing so well that it's producing lots of blades and shedding the excess blades, but could also mean that somewhere there's been a big die off of the seagrass and that released a lot of blades," Douglass said.
People at the beach said it didn’t take away from their day on the sand.
“I didn’t mind at all," Titcomb said. "I thought it was kind of cool."
Douglass said what some are calling the "sea spaghetti" is a popular feast among manatees and turtles.
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