Tube Worm Gallery

South Pacific, Solomon Islands. Close-up of a colorful Christmas tree worm or burrowing tube worm

South Pacific, Solomon Islands. Close-up of a colorful Christmas tree worm or burrowing tube worm. Credit as: Jones & Shimlock / Jaynes Gallery / DanitaDelimont

© Jones & Shimlock / Jaynes Gallery / DanitaDelimont.com

Animal, Animal Theme, Burrowing Tube Worm, Christmas Tree Worm, Colorful, Coral, Day, Fauna, Jaynes Gallery, Marine, Mullins Beach, No People, Ocean, Pattern, Photographer, Pink, Red, Sea Life, Shape, Solomon Islands, South Pacific, South Pacific Ocean, Spiral Gilled Tubeworm, Tube Worm, Underwater, Worm

Breadcrumb sponge (Halichondria panacea)

Breadcrumb sponge (Halichondria panacea) (orange) in a rock pool. At centre left and lower right are pebbles encrusted with calcareous worm tubes excreted by the tube worm (Pomatoceros triqueter). Photographed in an estuarine intertidal zone

© DR KEITH WHEELER/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Animal, Biological, Biology, Breadcrumb Sponge, Calcareous, Ecological, Ecology, Estuarine, Estuary, Fauna, Halichondria Panacea, Intertidal Zone, Invertebrate, Invertebrates, Marine, Nature, Pebble, Pebbles, Pomatoceros Triqueter, Porifera, Poriferan, Sea, Shore, Sponge, Stone, Stones, Tube Worm, Wild Life, Worm Tube, Zoological, Zoology

Deep ocean alien life form, artwork

Deep ocean alien. Artwork of an alien life form adapted to survive on the seabed of a deep ocean. The life form resembles a tube worm as found on Earth. Tube worms secrete a substance which hardens to form a spiral tube. This becomes their home from which they feed by trapping plankton with tentacles. A planet or moon with liquid water and deep ocean geothermal activity, such as may exist on the Jovian moon Europa, could harbour such life forms. Sunlight cannot reach such depths hence energy and nutrients are derived from heat and minerals released by hydrothermal vents

© CHRISTIAN DARKIN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY