Elleda Wilson: Old age
Aug. 18—The Ocean Conservancy has come up with a list of the seven longest-living ocean animals, starting with the rougheye rockfish (Sebastes aleutianus), pictured, who grow slowly, have a maximum lifespan of a bit over 200 years and live in Pacific coastal waters at depths of 500 to 1,500 feet.
Bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) are 60-foot mammals who can live 200 years or more and inhabit arctic and subarctic waters. The ocean quahog clam (Arctica islandica), an Atlantic Ocean dweller, can live from 200 to 500 years. Ming the Clam broke the Guinness World Record as the oldest noncolonial animal in the world, living from 1499 to 2006 (the age is the number of shell ridges), or 507 years. Now the Ear feels guilty for all those quahogs consumed as a child.
The Greenland shark (Somniosus microcephalus), who roams the seas around the Arctic, Iceland and, of course, Greenland, live to be 300 to 500 years old. In 2009, scientists found a species of deep sea black coral (Leiopathes glaberrima) that was about 4,265 years old.
Glass sponges (Hexactinellida) are deep ocean animals that attach themselves to the sea floor for life. Reefs of these sponges were believed extinct until 1987, when 9,000-year-old glass sponge reefs were found in Canada. And, finally, the teeny immortal jellyfish (Turritopsis dohrnii) species, which can revert from being an adult to its younger polyp form, constantly renewing itself.
Scientists posit that the bigger long-lived animals have a slower metabolism, as do those that live in frigid waters, i.e. "species that live fast will die young, while those that have a slower metabolic rate live slower and longer."
