Move over Sponge Bob.
Now ‘Belinda’ the sea sponge is taking centre stage as the world’s preeminent marine invertebrate after researchers from the University of Alberta and University of Victoria captured it ‘sneezing’ on the sea bed near Vancouver Island.
In partnership with Oceans Networks Canada, the researchers carried out a study on the tennis-ball sized Suberite coninnus sponge which evolved over 600 million years ago.
Sponges are considered to be good indicators of changes in the ocean environment, including climate change, because they can live for hundreds of thousands of years.
In it, they discovered that it not only expels waste from its porous interior, but it also hibernates in winter. It’s all captured via live cams set up about 23 metres under the surface of Barkley Sound near Port Alberni.
The video was captured over four years and subsequently analyzed. the study marks the longest continuous recording of animals in the wild.
According to the study, sponges filter large amounts of water, up to 1000 times their volume every hour, removing up to 95% of the bacteria and particulates for food. Although they can move short distances, sponges have “functionally evolved to a sedentary lifestyle of filter feeding.”
So much for the Krusty Krab.
The study also found that Belinda contracts to half her size in winter and becomes dormant. But in summer it often shuttered with full body contractions, or sneezes, lasting 11 hours or more at a time.
In the process it expelled mucous covered irritants — mostly phytoplankton blooms — that were consumed as food by other creatures.
Sally Leys, a biology professor at the University of Alberta said the name ‘Belinda’ was by design.
“Why Belinda?” She told the Victoria Times Colonist. “You better give it a name or you’re going to get a SpongeBob.”