It's Orange. It's Slimy. It's A Sea Squirt.

HOMER, Alaska - Charles and Gretchen Lambert oohed and ahhed as they crawled around the harbor docks recently, hoisting slime-encrusted ropes and buoys lodged below the docks.

"We've got the jackpot here," shouted Charles Lambert.

The two biologists had arrived in Homer to investigate a report that a new sea creature had been discovered in Kachemak Bay.

Clinging to one of the ropes they pulled up were globs of what they came to see: a never-before-identified member of the sea squirt family. The clumps looked like orange-tinted clusters of cauliflower heads. But as the Lamberts quickly pointed out, they were colonies of individuals, each with its own circulatory and nervous and digestive systems.

"It's surprising no one had noticed them before, they are so abundant," Gretchen Lambert said. "Sometimes species go unrecognized because of misidentification. But sometimes people think that it is so common surely somebody must know about it."

Fishermen and tourists wandering the docks looked with curiosity as they stepped over the Lamberts' outstretched legs. The Lamberts seemed not to notice.

They are quite certain the new species of sea squirt is unique and indigenous to Kachemak Bay. They plan to visit a half-dozen other Alaska harbors to see whether it lives elsewhere. Then they will return to their laboratory in Seattle, where Gretchen Lambert will spend the next several months studying the samples. Some specimens will be shipped to the Smithsonian Institution for cataloging and archiving. Then she will write a paper on the discovery.

That's when the new sea squirt will get its name.

"The first time the name appears in print, that name sticks," she said. So she is mum about her ideas. She wants it to appear first in a scholarly journal. But she promised the name "will commemorate the great state of Alaska." And if it isn't found in any other Alaskan harbors, the name will probably somehow capture its Kachemak Bay home.

While it is not unheard of for new species to be found in Alaska, it is rare enough that the staff at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was excited at the news, said LaVerne Smith, the agency's assistant regional director of fisheries and ecological services. When new species are found in Alaska, they tend to be in the marine environment, because it has not been studied as much as the land, she said.

The specimen found in Kachemak Bay is believed to be the third species of sea squirt found in the state, Gretchen Lambert said. "They are good guys. They are filterers."

Sea squirts are also known in the scientific world as "ascidians" or "tunicates." They are members of the chordata family. Some chordates have the characteristics of invertebrates, but others have the characteristics of vertebrates. So in some ways the chordates link the two major divisions of the animal kingdom, according to "Under Alaskan Seas," a book by Lou and Nancy Barr. The ascidians, or sea squirts, are most often lumped with invertebrates.

As larvae, sea squirts are free-swimming and look like tadpoles. After a brief period in open water, the larvae latch onto a solid surface, their tails are reabsorbed, and they live there permanently. Sea squirts can be found in many sizes around the world. In Japan, France and Chile, they are considered a delicacy. The sea squirt found in Kachemak Bay appears to mature at 1 to 2 inches in length.

They have two valves. Water moves steadily through one valve and into an internal chamber, where gases are exchanged and food particles from the water are caught on strands of mucus, then the cleansed water passes out through a second valve.

The name "sea squirt" is derived from what happens if something disturbs them. They quickly contract their muscles and squirt a jet of water from one of their two siphons.

Some species of sea squirts live for a number of years, but the Kachemak Bay sea squirts appear to be kept in check by cold weather. The colonies die off in the fall leaving only buds, Gretchen Lambert said.

The first inkling there might be an unidentified species lurking in the Homer harbor came last fall. A group of scientists led by a team from the Smithsonian had put out collection devices called "fouling plates" as part of an ongoing study of what nonindigenous species might be arriving in Alaska ports via cargo ships' ballast waters.

What appeared to be sea squirts were part of the mix on the plates and were sent for positive identification to the Lamberts, among the nation's foremost experts on sea squirts. The Lamberts spent more than 25 years at the University of California at Fullerton. He was a professor; she was a researcher.

They retired a year ago and moved to Seattle. Since 1975, they have published a twice-annual sea squirt newsletter, which can be found on the Internet.

"I knew right away, and the more I looked at it, I knew that it was something new," Gretchen Lambert said. To be sure, she contacted Gary Sonneville with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Soldotna and asked him to go to the Homer harbor to collect more samples.

She then sent specimens to a sea squirt expert in Russia. The Russian expert said the specimen looked a lot like the one found in Kamchatka, but he, too, said it appears to be distinct.