As a little girl watching a Blue Planet video, Madeline Frey dreamed of becoming a scientist and discovering a never-before-known animal.
“I wanted to find what no one else had looked at before,” she recalls, “to study what no one else had.”
Frey didn’t expect to identify eleven new species by age 20 — nor did she imagine that they would be slippery, slimy, alien-looking ribbon worms at the Bodega Marine Laboratory and Reserve on the Northern California coast.
Billions of worms inhabit our planet, under water as well as on land. Ribbon worms, with smooth, unsegmented bodies, claim a phylum of their own, with the goddess-worthy name of Nemertea. More than 1,300 species have been identified, but little is known about their hidden lives.
As an undergraduate at the University of California, Davis, Frey scooped a trowel-full of sand from a beach that researchers have been exploring for years and spotted something new: a small tubular creature that seemed “super-mesmerizing—really weird and unusual and not like anything I’d ever seen before.” Its creamy white body measured about four inches, with swirls of pink ganglia (brain tissue) visible through its pale skin.
With a field science fellowship for a 10-week survey in 2020, Frey and Eric Sanford, professor of coastal ecology and evolution, continued the search. Their final count totaled 34 species, including eleven, confirmed by genetic analysis at the University of Oregon, never before identified.
“I cannot overstate how little is known about ribbon worms,” says Frey, who sees her research as “a first step” in learning more about the marine animals described as “the most alien-looking creatures on the planet.”
“Nemerteans,” as supple as the ribbons twirled by gymnastic dancers, can contract to less than half an inch and can sometimes stretch, in the case of the bootlace ribbon worm, to more than 100 feet. With neither hearts nor spines, they reproduce by releasing sperm and eggs into the sea, hatching eggs, giving birth to teeny tiny babies or breaking into fragments that regenerate as full-sized worms. Their sinuous bodies vary in shades from white to bright to striped. But theirs is a fatal beauty.
These warrior worms are ferocious predators that wield an assassin’s array of lethal weaponry. Hiding in seagrass, crevices or sediment, they lie in wait for larvae, small crustaceans or other worms. In an instant, they unleash their proboscis, a stretchy long tube or tree-like web stored within the body cavity that everts (turns inside out) as it extends to snag prey—or ward off a predator.
“Armed” ribbon worms sport dagger-like stylets at the tips of their proboscis. Others produce a sticky, toxic mucus that ensnares and immobilizes their victims. Some species can expand to swallow a fish double the width of their narrow bodies. Potent digestive enzymes emulsify its internal organs into a slurpy-like mush.
Ribbon worms, which have captivated viewers on YouTube videos, also may deepen scientific understanding. Highly sensitive to their environments, the tiny dancers may be excellent indicators of how climate change is affecting ocean health.
As I explore the beaches and tide pools of the rocky Sonoma coast, I wonder what other creatures may inhabit the world beneath my feet — near but unknown, out of sight yet a vital part of the dance of life. And I marvel at the stories yet to be told and at the next generation of young explorers eager to discover them.
Photos credits: Madeline Frey, Eric Sanford, Jackie Sones
Listen to Maddy Frey describe her ribbon worm research:
