Sea Creatures 101: Underwater Worms

Why in the world would I write about such a disgusting subject as worms? I asked myself that a few times in researching this topic. This is how it happened-I was watching television late one night and saw an amazing thing-worms in the ocean, massing together at the surface. It was night, and they were glowing.

The narrator of the program said that they were called Paolo worms. These worms can be found in the Philippines, and are not actually complete worms, but sections of a type of polychaete worm called an epitoke. These segments of deep-sea worms develop eyes and break off from the main worm to swim to the water surface and reproduce. This happens once a year during a full moon. Natives in small villages in the Philippines can't wait for this event to happen. Apparently, these "worms" are pretty tasty. The villagers search the reef shallows and gather the creatures up in their baskets.

Now I've really made you sick, right? You've got to admit that it's kind of interesting. When we think of worms, we generally think of slimy things or parasites. Actually, worms aren't so bad. Deep-sea worms are not much like the worms we run across on land. These worms are called Polychaetous Annelids and have two sub-classes: Errantia and Sedentaria.

Errantia worms are more like the worms we see on dry land. They can move or crawl and have tube feet (like starfish have), a definite head, jaws, or teeth. The bristle worm is one of these. Sedentaria worms don't move (they are sedentary-that's where the name comes from). They have segments to their "bodies", often looking like they have parts stacked on top of each other. They have no specific jaws or teeth, and the head usually has tentacles hanging off of it. These are hard to describe in words, but you may know what a feather-duster worm looks like. That is a Sedentaria worm.

Fairly recently, a marine biologist named Craig Cary discovered a "new" type of Sedentaria worm in the Pacific Ocean just west of Costa Rica. It lives about 1½ miles below the surface near hydrothermal vents. These vents blow out a combination of metals and sulphide. Temperatures near the vents can get higher than 176 degrees F (80 degrees C). Mr. Cary used a deep-sea submersible to get down to the vents, and a temperature probe to get readings directly from the worm. He named the worm the Pompeii worm

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