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Image of Sandcastle worm

Image of Sandcastle worm

Description:

"Beautiful, beautiful worms. Need to look them up. Fairly sure I've seen (and possible photographed) these before. Time to learn them... Update: after consulting Light's, Kozloff, BPT, and this dead ringer of a photo at CalPhotos I think this is probably Phragmatopoma californica, the common sandcastle worm. Can anyone confirm? Each tube was no more than 1-3 cm long. Observed in a kelp holdfast at ~30 ft depth, off Pacific Grove, CA. Also of note: an NYTimes article on researchers studying this worms sand adhesive for biomedical applications (or perhaps ""biomedical inspiration"" would be more accurate). Via oceanwire."

Source Information

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cc-by-nc-4.0
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Ken-ichi Ueda
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iNaturalist
ID
https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/773