On a sunny morning in August 2021, Dr. Thomas Turner plunged into the water at the Carmel Pinnacles State Marine Reserve off California’s Central Coast. He found himself surrounded by steep granite walls, canopies of kelp forests and several species that struck him as unfamiliar.
An expert on sea sponges and a professor at UC Santa Barbara, Turner has collected over a thousand samples of the porous creatures since 2019. On this particular 45-minute-long dive within Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, he noticed every surface was covered in all kinds of the strange animals feeding on plankton.
“I was definitely excited,” Turner said over the phone Tuesday. “I could immediately tell just by looking at them — these were sponges I hadn’t seen anywhere else.”