Carnivorous ‘death ping pong balls’ discovered near remote UK island

Thousands of metres beneath the surface of the Earth in a near-endless void, carnivorous ping pong balls are on the hunt.

No, this isn’t the plot of a cheesy 1980s midnight movie – this ‘death ball sponge’ is one of 30 deep-sea creatures discovered by a recent expedition.

Living in one of the most remote regions of the planet is the Chondrocladia sp. nov, which is covered in tiny hooks to trap prey.

Chondrocladia sp. nov were found 3,601 metres into the Trench North, just east of Montagu Island, 1,200 miles south-east of the Falkland Islands.

On the menu are copepods, teeny-tiny shrimplike crustaceans which are a common source of protein for marine life.

Researchers from the expedition, led by a nonprofit dedicated to the global discovery of ocean life called Ocean Census, compared the critter to ‘ping pong balls on stems’.

Dr Nicolai Roterman, of the University of Portsmouth, who was not involved in the expedition, said the ‘death ball’ sponge isn’t your typical sea sponge, which lack muscles, nervous systems and even internal organs.

‘Sponges normally filter feed tiny food particles in the water, but there is so little food suspended in deep-sea water that it’s more efficient to trap larger animals,’ the deep-sea ecologist and senior lecturer in marine biology told Metro.

‘This is a bit like Venus fly traps ensnaring insects because they grow in nutrient-depleted conditions.’

The sponge’s bubble-like balls are thought to contain water and are only a few centimetres in size.

Surviving in the ocean’s deepest trenches requires remarkable adaptations.

‘Other species have adapted in ways which look bizarre or even scary to humans, as they have organs which generate light in the darkness of the deep-sea to see or lure prey, or have large upward-facing eyes to capture the minuscule amounts of light penetrating from the surface and massive teeth for ambushing and catching prey larger than their own bodies,’ said Dr Roterman.

And that includes the 30 new squishy, alien-like animals found in the rarely-sampled waters near Antarctica.

Among them were iridescent scale worms (Eulagisca sp. nov). Nicknamed ‘Elvis worms’, their scales glow and flash to distract predators, making them more like otherworldly behemoths than the rock ‘n roll singer.

A new genus of sea pen, which looked like orange furry writing quills, as well as ‘Zombie worms were also seen.

Rather than feast on brains, these worms have no mouth or gut, so they rely on bacteria to turn the fat on the bones of whales and other oceanic giants into edible mush.

Rare gastropods and bivalves were spotted lurking inside volcanic and hydrothermal-influenced habitats, where crushing pressure and high temperatures are the norm.

Ocean Census was founded by the Nippon Foundation, a Japanese philanthropic organisation, and the British ocean exploration foundation Nekton. 

They have one goal – find 100,000 new marine species in the next decade.

There’s a long way to go. More than two million species are estimated to live in the oceans, but only 10% of ocean life is known and only 80% of the ocean floor has been mapped.

Expeditions surveyed the volcanic calderas, the South Sandwich Trench and seafloor habitats around Montagu and Saunders Islands in February and March.

Teams used a remotely operated underwater vehicle called SuBastian to trawl the ocean depths at 4,500 metres, nearly as tall as the Alps.

Going to the vastly under-sampled region was a no-brainer, said Oliver Steeds, the director of Ocean Census.

‘Where the Southern Ocean meets the South Atlantic, currents mixing with active seabed volcanism, life in these remote depths is extraordinary and largely undiscovered,’ he told Metro.

‘We hope the discoveries will help support the South Georgia and South Sandwich Island Government’s continued efforts to conserve and protect the UK’s extraordinary wealth of biodiversity.’

The expedition collected 2,000 specimens across 14 animal groups. To discover so many is ‘fantastic’, Professor Tim Smyth of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory told Metro.

Marine ecosystems carry out vital functions that support life on the surface, such as creating food or storing planet-warming gases, he said. It’s why the charity is developing the largest study of vulnerable deep-sea habitats.

‘Through new technologies, including the use of AI to identify species, we are steadily gaining a far greater understanding of the deep ocean than ever before,’ Professor Smyth added.

But for Dr Roterman, we may have to explore as much of the depths while we still can.

‘Deep-sea expeditions telling us more about the diversity of life are vitally important at a time when there is a strong push to exploit mineral resources in the deep sea and trawl ever deeper for fish,’ he said.

‘We may end up losing species to habitat destruction before we have a chance to study them (akin to cutting down virgin, unexplored rainforests) with the loss of knowledge that feeds into other scientific research.’

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