Twenty-three meters below the surface of Barkley Sound, a sea sponge named Belinda talks to researchers about changing ocean conditions.
“Honestly, it was very opportunistic,” Dominica Harrison, one of the study’s authors, told Global News.
“They just turned the cameras on and Belinda was there. I’m just hanging out.
The study, published in the Marina Ecology Progress series, examined Belinda’s response to its changing environment and the rare images were captured by Ocean Networks Canada over four years, making it the longest continuous record of these animals in the wild state.
Eight 3D cameras captured Belinda’s behavior every hour, watching her feed, filter and, in some cases, sneeze for days to clear debris.
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“The most important thing we discovered is that sponges hibernate, like bears,” Harrison said.
Co-author Sally Leys of the University of Alberta added that Belinda hibernates every winter.
“That’s what I think is really cool, because it tells you that it senses and responds to global cycles,” she said.
Belinda also responded to the marine heatwave that increased sea surface temperatures off the west coast of North America between 2013 and 2016.
The images showed Belinda darkening from a healthy pale orange and yellow to a dark orange while taking on a lumpy texture.
“It’s about how much stress these animals can handle and how resilient they are,” Leys said.
“This one seems pretty durable. A lot of things went wrong during this time, “Belinda” came back.
Researchers say Belinda’s experiment shows how vital sedentary animals respond to changing ocean conditions, with longer-term monitoring needed to better predict and protect them.
“If you see it’s active, then you’ll better understand why you support protecting this environment,” Leys said.
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