Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Minivan-sized sponge amazes scientists
Age of creature remains mystery
HONOLULU — Researchers in Hawaii have been absorbed by a sea creature they discovered last summer, and their findings are pretty big.
The team of scientists on a deepsea expedition in the waters off Hawaii discovered what they say is the world’s largest known sponge.
The creature, roughly the size of a minivan, was discovered about 7,000 feet down in a marine conservation area off the shores of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The rare sponge, with a bluish-white color and brainlike appearance, stunned scientists when it appeared in the remote cameras attached to their underwater rover.
Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Hawaii studied the sponge for about a year before releasing their findings.
“The largest portion of our planet lies in deep waters, the vast majority of which has never been explored,” said Papahanaumokuakea research specialist Daniel Wagner with NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries in a statement released Wednesday. “Finding such an enormous and presumably old sponge emphasizes how much can be learned from studying deep and pristine environments.”
A study published this week in the scientific journal Marine Biodiversity described the massive creature.
The animal was found in the waters of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, which is the largest protected conservation area in the United States and one of the largest in the world.
Christopher Kelley, program biologist at the Hawaii Undersea Research Lab, who helped lead the expedition with Wagner, said the crew captured images of the sponge with remote underwater cameras that were positioned above their underwater research vehicle. They used laser points to measure parts of the sponge and also carefully measured the vehicle and compared those dimensions with the images they had of the sponge and vehicle together to determine its size.
Kelley said they took samples of a sponge of the same species they found the day before the larger one and sent them to the world’s top experts, and no one could identify what genus the sponge belongs to.
“Here’s this animal that has presumably never been encountered before and it’s enormous, and that kind of bring up a little intrigue for deep water and what else exists down there,” he said.
Researchers pored over scientific literature and found this was the largest documented sponge to date, but it is only incrementally larger than other sponges found.
Sponges are similar to coral reefs in that they provide critical habitat for other sea life and filter large amounts of sea water and remove material other animals in the ocean don’t eat.
According to scientists, some of the large sponges found in more shallow waters have been estimated to be more than 2,300 years old, leading researchers to wonder how old some of these deep-sea organisms that have never been encountered can become.