enigmaticus was found in two lagoons (Arroyo Burro Creek, Mission Creek Lagoon) in Santa Barbara County. In 2011, 86 specimens were collected on fouling plates in Newport Bay, although none were found in Los Angeles Harbor or San Diego Bay (California Department of Fish and Game 2014). comm., 10 November 2015, cited by Pernet et al. 2008), but these records were erroneous (Bastida-Zavala, pers. Collections were also reported from San Diego Bay in 2000 (Bastida-Zavala et al. This serpulid is established in Southern California, but its distribution is spotty. In 2000, a few specimens of Ficopomatus enigmaticus were collected in Los Angeles Habor (Cohen et al. It was subsequently found at several locations in Elkhorn Slough during a 1998 survey (Wasson et al. enigmaticus was collected in the old Salinas River Channel at Moss in the Elkhorn Slough system. It has been collected in brackish water in the Petaluma and Napa Rivers (Cohen and Carlton 1995 Cohen et al. By the 1970s, it was widespread in the Bay, occurring in the central Bay at Alameda and Berkeley, in the south Bay at Palo Alto and Foster City, and in San Pablo Bay at Corte Madera Creek, San Rafael, and San Quentin (Carlton 1979). North American Invasion History: Invasion History on the West Coast:įicopomatus enigmaticus was first reported from San Francisco Bay, California in 1921, when it was found building conspicuous reefs in Lake Merritt lagoon (Carlton 1979). 2003), Africa (ten Hove and Weerdenburg 1978), South America (Obenat and Pezzani 1991), New Zealand (Read and Gordon 1991), Japan (Asakura 1992) and Taiwan (ten Hove and Weerdenburg 1978). Since then it has been recorded from Hawaii, the East and Gulf coasts of the US, the Baltic Sea (Jensen and Knudsen 2005), the Mediterranean (Bianchi and Morri 1996), the Caspian Sea (Grigorovich et al. The southern coast of Australia is a more likely (though still uncertain) native region (Allen 1953 ten Hove and Weerdenburg 1978 Keough and Ross 1999). It first appeared more or less simultaneously in France, Spain, England, Australia and California (Fauvel 1923 cited by Carlton 1979).

Fauvel (1923 cited by Carlton 1979) hypothesized an Indian/Indonesian origin, but many authors have ruled this out. However, the native range of this species is unknown. The tubeworm Ficopomatus enigmaticus was first described from Caen, France, on the English Channel Coast (Fauvel 1923, cited by Carlton 1979 Goulletquer et al. First Non-native North American Tidal Record: 1921 First Non-native West Coast Tidal Record: 1921 First Non-native East/Gulf Coast Tidal Record: 1951

The Arroyo by M. Caspian