@mbari_news: Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss out on floating with a pigbutt worm. 🙃⁠ ⁠ Our team first spotted the unusual pigbutt worm (Chaetopterus pugaporcinus) in 2001 and had a tough time determining how to categorize such a curious critter. Working closely with our collaborators, we eventually confirmed we had encountered a new species of bristle worm that drifts through the midwater instead of living on the seafloor.⁠ ⁠ This little worm is about the size of a hazelnut, and even using our high-resolution cameras, it took the eagle eyes of our expert biologists to spot these miniature orbs in the massive ocean. ⁠ ⁠ Sequencing the pigbutt’s DNA established that they fit into the family Chaetopteridae. Members of this group of worms typically live attached to the seafloor in parchment-like tubes, although they do have a free-swimming larval stage. The mix of both larval and adult features seen in the pigbutt worm is certainly unusual.⁠ ⁠ Since their discovery two decades ago, we have only seen this unique worm offshore of Central California, primarily around Monterey Bay, and a few observations off the Channel Islands. The deep sea teems with life, and many remarkable species are still awaiting discovery in the dark. We are working to catalog deep-sea animals and environments so we can predict how threats like climate change and mining will affect them. The pigbutt worm is just one of more than 200 new species named by our team and collaborators. Who knows what we will find next? #DeepSea #oceananimals #DeepOcean #oceanlover

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Thursday 17 July 2025 04:09:05 GMT