Evening star., 1955-03-14
Weird Morine Worms
Inhobit Floor of Ocean
Lost Frontier of Life Is Dark
Home of Fontustic Animals
By Thomos R. Henry

A tangled city of mounded worm
holes is the deep sea bottom.
This last frontier of life, realm Of
total darkness and red-gray ooze is the
abode of an almost unknown world
ing some of the weirdest of living
creatures.
Major elements of its fauna are bur-
rowing worms-creatures like the bril-
liantly luminous chaetopterus, spoon
worms and sipunculids who spend
their lives buried in sand or mud which,
like earthworms. they pass through
their bodies and from which they cx-
tract minute food particles. Close be-
hind them in numbers and variety are
obscure mollusks and crustaceans.
Basin Surveyed
Perhaps the most closely observed
and photographed area of this sea floor
to date is the bottom of the San Pedro
basin off the southern coast of Cali
fornia, a veritable metropolis OF worm
burrows, which has been reported to
the American Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science by DR. Olga Hart
man of the Allan Hancock Foundation
of the University of Southern Cali
fornia.
On various levels of this sea floor
more than 400 kinds of animals, mostly
new to science have been identified.
Almost 300 are species of annelid
worms Most of the new animals be-
long to small and strange worm FAM
lilies. The large groups which are gen.
orally known to biologists, such as the
nereids, serpulids and eunicids. abun-
dant along tidal flats over most of the
world, are barely represented in the
collections. Most of the deep water
groups appear quite localized.
The area survey included more than
500 square miles of ocean floors, of vari-
Gus depths. 1t is largely bedrock, pre-
Sumably part of the earth's original
crust. overlain with silt, ooze, clay that
exceeds three feet in thickness every
where and affords easy burrowing for
the animals.
The most diversified animal life was
found at a depth of about $50 fathoms.
Below it became more and more i'm
poverished although a considerable va
riety-most notable of which was a
glass sponge-was found around SUBJ
merged sea mountain at depth Of
about 425 fathoms.
Stay Near Home
The records indicate that the various
types of deep sea animals keep rather
closely to their own territories. These
may be only few square yards in area
but there does not seem to be much
overlapping. There are considerable
areas With almost no animal life at all.
In others it is quite dense, Dr. Hart
man said.
The ocean floor is jungle of sort.
but hardly jungle ruled by tooth and
claw 1t is unlikely that the animals
prey on one another to any great ex-
tent. Most are burrowers. They are
fairly secure in their burrows. The
ooze presumably is quite rich in food
remains of dead sea plants and animals
which have settled from the surface.
Each particle, however, must be ex-
tracted from the mud by an animals
digestive organs. The ooze also is very
rich in bacteria upon which the worms
feed.
Some of the animals recovered are
foot or more in length and it is not
unlikely that there are sea-bottom
giants which are several feet long.
Very little is known of their ways of
living, beyond the fact that the
majority burrow in the ooze.