Taking Inventory: Sea Pickle

As you might expect, sea pickles appeared in the oceans of the Overworld as part of the Update Aquatic in July 2018. They’ve not changed too much since, except that in the Village & Pillage update they became compostable.

It’s easy to acquire sea pickles. Find a coral reef and go diving. You’ll immediately find them on the coral blocks that make up the seafloor, in groups of one to four. If you don’t have a coral reef nearby, then you can also buy them sometimes from a wandering trader. Using bonemeal on a set of sea pickles will increase the colony size, and will also spread the pickles to other nearby coral blocks. So that’s an option if you want to acquire them in bulk. 

When placed underwater, pickles will generate light – and a colony of more pickles will produce more light. They can also be composted for a good chance of raising the compost level, and smelted into lime dye.

Sea pickles in Minecraft are modeled after a strange collection of real-world species called "pyrosomes". These creatures don’t sit on the seafloor, instead they float around with the currents in upper layers of warm seas. Each creature is only a few millimetres in size, but they live in cylinder-shaped colonies of hundreds to thousands of individuals. 

These colonies are bioluminescent, flashing a blue-green light that can be seen many metres away. Occasionally sailors on a dark night report seeing calm seas containing hundreds of colonies, flashing away. Scientist Thomas Huxley wrote in 1849: