Aquarium staff at Newquay’s Blue Reef Aquarium in Cornwall, England were left scratching their heads after some coral reef and fish were left devastated, with no known cause.
The display was staked out for several weeks, but the cause of the devastation was never revealed. Not until the staff resorted to dismantling the display rock by rock did they find the culprit.
Turns out its was nothing but a 4 foot long giant sea worm, which the staff affectionately named “Barry”. Before being lured out by fish scraps, Barry managed to bite through 20 lb fishing line. Luckily for the aquarium staff, none of them had the pleasure of encountering one of the thousands of bristles covering Barry, seeing that said bristles can inflict permanent numbness in humans.
Matt Slater, the aquarium’s curator, believes Barry, who now resides in his own tank, initially made his way to the aquarium as a juvenile, inside a rock transported from another aquarium. [ Daily Mail Online]