News Animals

Antarctic waters may shelter wrecks from shipworms

Ocean currents and polar front form 'moat' that keeps destructive mollusks at bay

NEW BONE-EATER  A new species of worm that feeds on  the bones of dead whales, Osedax antarcticus, turned up in a study of  what happens to bones and wood that sink in Antarctic waters.

Courtesy of Adrian Glover/Natural History Museum

By Susan Milius

- More than 2 years ago

Quirks of ocean currents may have turned the waters around Antarctica into a rare sanctuary for undiscovered wooden shipwrecks, free of the destructive mollusks known as shipworms.