A Worm with Glorious Feathers Found in the Chilean Sea

JAKARTA – The oceans on Earth are full of strange creature. A group of scientists from the Schmidt Ocean Institute have discovered an unusual, caterpillar-like sea worm. This worm has black hair all over its body that glows when light shines off it.
The discovery was made using the SuBastian remote control vehicle (ROV) off the coast of Chile. The sea creature was seen moving on the seabed while other animals made their way.

When the lights from the submarine hit her body, her feathers moved, making her look like a disco ball.

The creature is a polychaete, a type of deep-sea worm known as a brooch worm. About 13,000 polychaete species live in marine ecosystems around the world. Including different types of worms, such as bloodworms (sudder) and the strangely named pigworm.

Schmidt Ocean posted about the sea worm on Instagram on November 4. Describing the worm as “a bold glowing lady,” he wrote, “Some worms are bioluminescent, but this bold worm has a protein structure in its hair that makes it unstable.”

Some polychaetes can survive the extremely high temperature differences found in hydrothermal vents.

This is because they form a symbiotic relationship with bacteria. Others feed on plankton and marine snow that falls to the sea floor from above. They play an important role in the marine ecosystem by cleaning up waste on the seabed.

The team will further explore underwater canyons on the Nazca plate as part of the #ChileMargin2024 mission. The team will study hydrological and hydrological instruments off the west coast of Chile.

A few weeks ago, a bigfin squid (Magnapinna) was caught on camera walking with its 13-foot-long tentacles in the depths of the Tonga Trench in the South Pacific. The squid was spotted 10,800 feet below the surface of the water by an underwater explorer used by the Minderoo-UWA Deep Sea Research Centre.

Sightings of them are very rare and only 20 of them have been recorded so far. They are one of the deepest squid that live on the sea floor in scientific records. Their feathers cover 90 percent of their body.

(wbs)