Minivan-sized sponge discovered off Hawaii
HONOLULU — Researchers in Hawaii have been absorbed by a sea creature they discovered last summer, and their findings are pretty big.
Scientists on a deep-sea 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 brain-like appearance, stunned scientists when images of 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,” Papahanaumokuakea research specialist Daniel Wagner with NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries said 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 last week in the scientific journal Marine Biodiversity described the massive creature. The animal was found in the waters of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, the largest protected conservation area in the United States and one of the largest in the world. It covers an area bigger than all the other U.S. national parks combined.
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 then used laser points to measure parts of the sponge and also carefully measured the vehicle and compared those dimensions to 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 brings up a little intrigue for deep water and what else exists down there,” he said.
While this particular sponge is only incrementally larger than other sponges found, the researchers say it shows the value in exploring the ocean’s depths to discover unknown and mysterious forms of life.
They pored over scientific literature and found this was the largest documented sponge to date.
Paul Dayton, professor emeritus at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, has studied large sponges in the Antarctic. “Certainly I can agree that this is a very large sponge indeed, the largest I have heard of,” he said in an email.
Sponges are similar to coral reefs in that they provide critical habitat for other sea life and filter large amounts of seawater and remove material other animals in the ocean don’t eat.
Some of the large sponges found in more shallow waters have been estimated to be over 2,300 years old.