The wreck of the famed ship helmed by Ernest Shackleton that sank in an expedition in 1915 has been discovered.
He was more interested in the footage than his breakfast. His first thought was that the ship looked fake, considering how pristine it was 106 years after it sank. His second thought was, what was happening to it?
The ship had become a garden over the years. The wreck footage was used to highlight some of the creatures that he recognized: anemones, sponges, sea squirts, sea stars and a lemon-yellow sea lily. White tendrils, transparent blobs, and a mysterious feather-shaped creature were some of the tenants.
In the deep sea, where food is scarce and the landscape is mostly, there is a rich bounty of creatures.
Louise Allcock, a zoologist at the National University of Ireland Galway, said that the wreck provides insights into the kinds of life that live on hard structures.
The anemones, worms, sponges, and a bright red amphipods that were swimming away from the wreck were all admired by Katrin Linse when she scanned the wreck footage in her office. She spotted a crab by a porthole.
Dr. Linse is interested in white crabs. The white creatures in the mud are ghosts.
Dr. Linse asked why he hadn't told her about the crab.
He missed the animal completely, it was only a white speck in the video. A crab is mundane in many places, but it had never been seen in the sea. Dr. Linse found three more crabs when she watched the video again.
There is a general absence of decapods, which include shrimp, crabs and lobsters.
The crabs in the Antarctic are very exciting to find because they were driven out of the island millions of years ago and have only recently returned.
The hairy white yeti crab, which is found in the Kiwaidae family, was spotted on the wreck and Dr. Griffiths wondered if it was a species in the family. A closer look at the crustacean revealed it was not a crab but a deep-sea squat lobster.
She said that there was only one squat lobster species in the ocean.
The crustacean opens up many new questions.
The crab is free to scuttle about the Endurance, but many of the other inhabitants are passive feeders. The sprinkling of waste called marine snow contains a lot of krill feces. The ship's elevation above the seafloor allows these largely immobile creatures to take advantage of water currents for feeding.
Some inhabitants stood out, especially near the wheel of the ship, because of the video quality. A brisingid sea star is a six-armed sea star. The stars use their arms to grab small crustaceans and other food in the water.
There are differing opinions on whether a creature sitting near the wheel is a hydroid or a black coral. The stem did not look straight enough for black coral, according to Dr. Allcock. Joan J. Soto, a researcher at the University of Bergen in Norway, said it did not look like the hydroids known from such depths.
No one is allowed to touch the wreck, which is considered a historical monument. Scientists can use higher-resolution videos to determine which species live on the wreck.
Estefan Rodriguez is a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York who studies anemones. The anemones are covered in different colors of stalks, from fat white to slender orange. Many anemone species look the same on the outside, meaning researchers need to cut them open to identify them.
If someone shows me a picture and asks what it is, I can only say "anemone", said Dr. Rodriguez.
The fat white anemone is from the family Actinostolidae and the orange one is from the family Hormathiidae.
The old ship's hull is dominated by anemones, and Dr. Rodriguez was happy to see them. Dr. Rodriguez said that he was interested in how they endure.
It is difficult to say how old the Endurance's invertebrate crew was 106 years ago or more recently. Glass sponges and anemones can live for thousands of years.
The largest living thing behind the wheel of the Endurance is an anemone.
The old crew got off alive, and this is who has moved in.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
