Deepwater Tubeworms

Five-foot-long deepwater tubeworms are sealed shut like sausages. Lacking a mouth, and a gut they don't eat, digest, and eliminate waste the way most other sea creatures do. A bright red plume at the tip of the of the tubeworm takes up sulfur and oxygen from the surrounding waters living inside the tubeworm and releases waste poducts back into the water. Bacteria living inside the tubeworm help turn the sulfur into food for their tubeworm hosts and themselves. The arrangement works well for the tubeworms , which can grow more than a foot in one year.