Thousands of ‘penis fish’ washed up on a California beach

A horde of large, fat worms descended upon a central California beach, spooked out of their burrows by a bomb cyclone.
Wildlife enthusiast David Ford captured the foreboding scene, which looks as though a plane full of frankfurters flung open the hatch and let the dogs rain down upon the unassuming shore.
What were these alien creatures, and why’d they end up on shore?
Ford sent his quandary and the surreal images of the Drakes Beach shore to Bay Nature magazine, a local science