Bone-Eating Worms Found In Antarctic Waters

sciencehabit writes "When you drop a whale backbone into Antarctic waters and retrieve it a year later, you'll find it covered with a pelt of wriggling, rosy-hued worms. Drop a chunk of wood in the same spot, and you'll discover that it's hardly changed. That's the result of a simple experiment to find out if some of the world's weirdest worms also live in Antarctic waters. The discovery extends the range of bone-eating worms to the Southern Ocean and suggests that Antarctic shipwrecks may be remarkably intact."

Comments

Re:Depth, temperature and current more important

[TapeCutter]

Yes, I think it's safe to assume that most wood enters the ocean via rivers, I would expect the vast majority of it is consumed by hungry critters before it gets of the river's underwater delta. From personal experience I worked on a fishing trawler in the Southern Ocean many years ago, even back in the 80's the ship pretty much drove itself but there had to be someone on watch at all times to avoid hazards (identified on the radar). Floating trees were the main worry but I only saw one or two when out at sea, which seems to agree with what your saying. The vast majority of the hazards turned out to be either floating beer cans, or sun-baking seals. Yes, they were Aussie seals, but I still haven't figured out how they managed the ring-pull with those flippers. :)