Quote[/b] ]Courtesy of R. Stone/NOAA Fisheries
New life in the deep: Shown are seven species of deep-sea sponges in
the Aleutian Islands, including two specimens new to science (the pink
specimen, lower left, and the white specimen, upper left). The photo
was taken from the Delta submersible at a 138-meter depth near Little
Tanaga Island.
Assessing fish habitat in the research submersible Delta last year off
the Aleutian Islands, Bob Stone discovered a scientific treasure.
The National Marine Fisheries Service biologist from the Auke Bay
laboratory and his research team found 28 new species of sponges. It
was almost by accident, he said. They were researching deep-sea coral
and fish habitat in the remote Alaska waters, when they found the
sponges and began collecting samples.
Stone said they collected about 105 different species from relatively
shallow waters with the Delta, and down to depths of 3000 meters with
a Remotely Operated Vehicle.
"About 27 percent of those were new, leading us to believe that if we
were to go back there we could find hundreds of them," he said. "There
are so many sponges there that we didn't collect last year that you
just have to believe that there's a gold mine of sponges out there."
The underwater landscapes were like a scene from a Dr. Seuss book,
with vibrant colored sponges of all shapes and sizes, Stone said. The
sponges were as diverse in appearance as exotic tulips and
chocolate-chip cookies.
Many people mistakenly classify sponges as a type of underwater plant,
Stone said.
"They're animals but they don't fit the typical description of an
animal," he said. "They are filter feeders."
Sponges can filter vast amounts of water on a daily basis to extract
nutrients from the water.
"A typical sponge can filter its own volume of water in 10 to 30
seconds," he said.
Stone has been busy collaborating with taxonomists in Germany and
Canada to classify and name the different species.
"Describing the new species, it is an incredible amount of work to do
this," Stone said.
In order to gain scientific acceptance, specimens must be registered
and authenticated at one of several qualified museums. Stone and his
colleagues have sent several of the sponges to the Smithsonian Museum
in Washington, D.C.
They have named 11 of the 28 new species so far, mainly with names of
the Aleutian Islands such as Tananga and Atka.
"We're gonna run out of names real quick because there just aren't
enough islands out there to name them after," Stone said.
Other names are derived from prominent structures of the animals. One
of the sponges, the Corona, is particularly fascinating to Stone and a
unique discovery in the scientific world.
"They're carnivorous, they don't filter sea water at all but they've
adapted the ability to capture prey floating by in the water column,"
Stone said.
Initial research indicates that the Corona sponges impale prey with
tiny spines and form tissue around the creatures to digest them, he
said. The scientists named the species Corona, the Spanish word for
crown, because of its prominent spiked top.
"That's a pretty significant finding," said Stone. "It's very unique
among the species."
Stone has a paper on the Corona sponge that is scheduled to be
published in the Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the
United Kingdom.
Sponges are a unique venue of research that has been overshadowed by
the more glamorous and politically sensitive issue of corals, Stone
said.
"Somehow in that whole (political) thing it got lost that sponges are
also important, and in my opinion, more important in terms of
abundance and diversity," he said. "If you look at it on that basis,
they're more important than corals. But I'll admit, they are not as
pretty or sexy as corals; but they are every bit as important from the
standpoint of fish habitat and ecosystem function."
Stone said there are more questions than answers about sponges,
particularly about essential fish habitat. NMFS has photos of fish and
other marine life intermingling with sponges, but Stone said there is
no conclusive answer to the importance of these sponges to the overall
fish habitat.
Stone has been creating guides with photos and descriptions of the
different species for federal fisheries observers to use on trawl
boats to identify where the different sponges are located.
"If you look at the bycatch there is just an incredible amount of
sponges that are in some of these fishing nets," he said. "None of
them are intact, they're all just pieces, which makes them difficult
to ID."
There are also many questions about the possible future uses of sponges.
"Deep sea animals show incredible promise as natural sources of
bio-medically active compounds. Compounds that are used as antibiotics
and other medicines," Stone said. "(Sponges) presumably show good
promise to fight diseases such as asthma, tuberculosis, cancer and
even AIDS."
Stone said he is excited about his research as a biologist in the coming years.
"Some taxonomists go their entire life without finding one species,
and we've found 28 like that, right off the bat," he said.
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