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CNN World Report

Canadian Biologists Awed By Ancient Sea Sponges

Aired April 29, 2001 - 14:32   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ASIEH NAMDAR, CNN ANCHOR: Canadian scientists are studying huge reefs at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean made up entirely of ancient sea sponges. They are the only living example of a type of sponge colony that used to rule the ocean floor. Canada's CBC has more on the reefs growing of the Queen Charlotte Islands.

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CHRISTINA LAWAND, CBC CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Plunge deep, deep down off the northern B.C. coast, and it's like plunging back in time. Here on the bottom of the ocean floor, scientists have discovered a rare snapshot of life much like it was in the Jurassic Age, back went dinosaurs roamed the earth, well before man or mammal were even a blip on the evolutionary chart.

KIM CONWAY, MARINE GEOLOGIST: The sponge reefs we have found are found nowhere else on the world. This is the only example that anybody has found anywhere.

LAWAND: Scientists first defected something big below the sea back in 1984. Then, Conway and his team went to check it out for themselves; what they found: an incredible world of sponge.

CONWAY: They are huge. The size of cities. Structures that are six-stories high, completely composed of sponges growing one on the other over the last 9,000 years.

LAWAND: European scientists and paleontologists are especially excited about this discovery. That's because 65 million years ago, much of Europe looked like this:

CONWAY: You can travel from Romania on the Black Sea all the way to Portugal and will you find sponge reefs made by the same kind of sponges we see off our coast.

LAWAND: That's back when much of Europe was submerged by sea water. Now, those same sponge reefs are large fossil mounts, often used to build castles on in Germany.

CONWAY: If you are looking for a sponge reef, look for a castle. Normally, there's a sponge reef underneath that castle.

LAWAND: For biologists, it's not just the history but the sponge itself that is so fascinating. SALLY LEYS, MARINE BIOLOGIST: It's gloss architecture is stunning. We look and it and we wonder, you know, how does a cell have the programing to design such stunning skeletal structures?

LAWAND: For scientists, it's a lost world that's been found; a piece of the present that is a key to understanding the past.

Christina Lawand, CBC News, Sidney, British Columbia.

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