Another installment in our regular “weird stuff found on local beaches” column ... introducing the spoon worm.

A local resident took this picture of a dotted trail on the Cowes foreshore and experts Mike Cleeland and Graeme Burgan hunted down an answer, concluding it was an echiura, a small group of marine animals.

“The worm is happy and harmless,” said Mike, education officer at Bunurong Coast Education.

“The dots I suspect are caused by surface ripples.”

More than 230 species of echiurans have been documented, with most living in burrows in soft sediment in shallow water.

Spoon worms are cylindrical, soft-bodied, and vary in size from less than a centimetre up to a metre.

They usually have a non-retractable proboscis to feed which can expand up to 10 times its length.