Thanks everybody for your thoughts,
I am sure the Bathysiphon suggestion is correct, not only because experts say so, but from what I know of how the organism looks. I've seen specimens before in our collections, but I didn't realise they could occur in dense fields like that. It is amazing that this list happens to have three (at least) deepsea biologists on it who have actually written papers on Bathysiphon!
Apart from the Kaikoura Canyon instance which Lisa mentioned, Bathysiphon hasn't turned up much in NIWA records for NZ waters. One wonders how often organisms like that still get discarded shipboard as non-animal, or unidentifiable - as the hair-thin siboglinids once were on Challenger, etc. Also foram occurrences were once regarded more as data the geologists must deal with, so not integrated with other living biota data.
Here's another paper on Bathysiphon.
Gooday, Andrew J.; Levin, Lisa A.; Thomas, Cynthia L.; Hecker, Barbara. 1992. The distribution and ecology of Bathysiphon filiformis Sars and Bathysiphon major De Folin, Protista, Foraminiferida, on the continental slope off North Carolina. Journal of Foraminiferal Research 22(2): 129-146 http://dx.doi.org/10.2113/gsjfr.22.2.129
Thanks all,
Geoff
-----Original Message-----
From: annelida-bounces from oat.bio.indiana.edu [mailto:annelida-bounces from oat.bio.indiana.edu] On Behalf Of Robert Diaz
Sent: Thursday, 11 September 2014 12:03 a.m.
To: annelida from net.bio.net
Subject: Re: [Annelida] What are these in tube field 1000 m?
Geoff
These look very much like tubes of the macrofaunal sized foraminiferan Bathysiphon spp.
Back in the early 1990s Jim Blake and I lead a study of benthic communities off the coast of North Carolina between depths of 600 to 2000 m.
We found high densities of Bathysiphon filiformis with tubes that look identical to the ones in your picture. Our findings were published in Deep-Sea Research Part II, Vol. 41, No. 4-6, 1994.
Bob
On Sep 10, 2014, at 2:29 AM, Geoff Read <Geoffrey.Read from niwa.co.nz> wrote:
> Hi all,
>> Attached is a video frame grab of a field of tubes in situ from about 1000 m in Cook Strait. There's quite a strong current going past right to left but the tubes don't flex at all. The visible tube lengths would be about 150 mm. No tentacles to be seen. I was thinking Polychaeta, perhaps a large chaetopterid. Other suggestions welcome.
