Exciting news from the underwater world: a team of researchers from B.C. and Alberta has released enlightening data collected after four years of observing…a sea sponge. A sea sponge? Yes. Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) used seafloor cameras off the B.C. coast to capture the world’s “longest continuous recording” of a sea sponge. (We assume it’s also the world’s longest recording of any kind of sponge, ever.) The research team included ONC scientists, along with experts from the University of Victoria and the University of Alberta. The group named the tennis-ball-sized sponge Belinda.
The researchers used time-lapse recordings from eight cameras to capture how Belinda responded to the environment changing around her. (It?) The environmental variations included changes in oxygen, turbidity, salinity, and temperature. Sea sponges may never move—they don’t even have muscles or a nervous system—but they “are remarkably active animals, with a range of behaviors,” wrote the authors in their paper. Sponge behaviours are largely body contractions and, in sponge observation terms, are called “sneezes.”
Five new species added to Canada’s at-risk list
Belinda sneezed a lot over the course of four years. Every year in the winter, the sponge contracted to half its size, apparently entering a dormant state for the coldest months. In February, it gradually expanded back to its normal size. By summer, Belinda was “very active with short-term full-body contractions each lasting 11 hours,” wrote the researchers. (Eleven hours of body contractions? Someone’s excited for prime cottage season!) Between 2013 and 2016, Belinda’s colour darkened from pale yellow-orange to a deep orange, and it developed “a lumpy texture,” said the researchers. This appeared to be in response to a marine heatwave in the Pacific Ocean off North America.
The researchers surmised that Belinda was changing in response to environmental changes in its underwater world. “Invertebrates and fish were frequently in contact with the sponge, but no single interaction was found to correlate with patterns of sponge behavior,” they wrote. “Our study underscores the dynamic nature of these sessile filter feeders and their responses to their environment.”
Underwater microphones will help protect B.C. whales
Sponges can live for hundreds—sometimes even thousands—of years. They might have been the first group of organisms to branch off from the earliest ancestor common to all animals. Given that they live so long, they’re useful sentinels of ocean change. So, no surprise: the data gathered through this kind of long-term study can prove valuable in understanding the impact of climate change on water quality and water temperature. Who knows what future research with Belinda will reveal?
Related Story Team in B.C. is restoring watersheds with artificial beaver dams
Related Story Researchers discover a new way to determine a whale’s sex
Related Story Why is this robot boat mapping the Great Lakes?