Published by the Point Reyes Light with photo courtesy of Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary
Before he died in May, a sponge expert who worked with the Royal British Columbia Museum discovered a new species of sponge among samples collected from the depths of the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary: Farrea cordelli.
The delicate, ruffled white sponge was discovered at nearly 7,000 feet below the ocean’s surface during an expedition in 2017 using a remotely operated vehicle aboard a research vessel named E/V Nautilus. Dr. Henry Reiswig had spent years examining the underwater footage and samples collected during the expedition, which yielded 11 sponge species that had never been found in Cordell Bank before.
“It doesn’t happen very often to find a species that has never been described,” said Danielle Lipski, a research coordinator for the sanctuary, a 1,236 square mile swath of ocean that extends south from Bodega Bay.
Sponges were likely the first animals to inhabit the earth, with fossil records dating back 640 million years. They conduct a variety of essential ecosystem services, though they are largely understudied, living as they do in the deepest and least accessible ocean environments. Their porous bodies allow water to filtrate through, bringing food and oxygen and removing waste.
Many of the 8,000 known species contain photosynthesizing organisms, producing three times more oxygen and organic matter than they consume. They boast a wide range of collaborations with other organisms: Fish and other animals rely on them to feed, rest and lay eggs on and to keep their young safe. Dolphins are known to carry sponges in their beaks as they forage for food along the seafloor as protection from sharp rocks, stingrays, urchins and other obstacles.
Farrea cordelli, the new sponge species, was collected near Bodega Canyon, which lies in the waters off Point Arena within an area of the sanctuary that was added in 2015. Dr. Reiswig had been combing through samples examining them under a microscope, considering that sponges are very hard to identify by photographs alone.
The E/V Nautilus, the vessel that gathered the specimen, is owned by the nonprofit Ocean Exploration Trust, which Dr. Richard Ballard—an oceanographer who discovered the Titanic—founded in 2008. The trust received funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration beginning in 2017 to assist deep-sea research in West Coast sanctuaries.
Biologists from Cordell Bank and the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuaries and the California Academy of Sciences have taken a number of trips on the Nautilus since 2016. The vessel offers a chance to greatly expand research: most remotely operated vehicles previously available to the sanctuaries can dive just 1,000 feet, but Hercules, the vehicle aboard the Nautilus, can dive up to 10,000 feet.
Last year, the first new species was discovered from one of these missions, a coral named Chromoplexaura cordellbankensis. Given the pandemic, the sanctuaries’ staff is continuing to process data from previous missions while boating is stalled for the foreseeable future.