It moves by contracting, thereby pumping water through its gelatinous body; it is one of the most efficient examples of jet propulsion in the animal kingdom.

Salps are common in equatorial, temperate, and cold seas, where they can be seen at the surface, singly or in long, stringy colonies.

Both portions of the life cycle exist together in the seas—they look quite different, but both are mostly transparent, tubular, gelatinous animals that are typically between 1 and 10 cm (0.4 and 3.9 in) long.

The solitary life history phase, also known as an oozooid, is a single, barrel-shaped animal that reproduces asexually by producing a chain of tens to hundreds of individuals, which are released from the parent at a small size.

Each blastozooid in the chain reproduces sexually (the blastozooids are sequential hermaphrodites, first maturing as females, and are fertilized by male gametes produced by older chains), with a growing embryo oozooid attached to the body wall of the parent.

[7] The incursion of a large number of salps (Salpa fusiformis) into the North Sea in 1920 led to a failure of the Scottish herring fishery.