Oceanography | Vol. 38, No. 2
52
FEATURE ARTICLE
EXPLORING CLIMATE CHANGE, GEOPOLITICS, MARINE
ARCHEOLOGY, AND ECOLOGY IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN THROUGH
WOOD-BORING BIVALVES
By Jørgen Berge, Torkild Bakken, Kristin Heggland, Jon-Arne Sneli, Øyvind Ødegård, Mats Ingulstad,
Terje Thun, and Geir Johnsen
BACKGROUND
In 1652, a young Siberian larch sprouted somewhere along the
Yenisei region in Siberia (Figure 1). Almost 250 years later, in
1904, that tree died. Then, in 2016, it ended up in a bottom trawl
in the Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard. In order to reach Svalbard,
the log must have been captured by sea ice in the Kara Sea and
transported by the Transpolar Drift (TPD) across the Arctic
Ocean before it was released and eventually sank in Rijpfjorden
at 80°N. When it was brought up on the deck of the research
vessel and examined by scientists, the log was heavily infested
with living specimens of the wood-boring bivalve Xyloredo nooi.
Shipworms and other wood-boring mollusks have never before
been reported from the High Arctic. This is, however, not only
a story about a piece of wood drifting across the Arctic Ocean
and the first report of Arctic wood-boring mollusks. It also tells
a story about the connection between climate and environmen
tal conditions, and the history of human activity in Svalbard, the
influence of the European timber industry and the Soviet Union
planned economy, Arctic resource extraction during the last
400 years, and preservation of marine archeological artifacts—
and it reveals significant gaps in knowledge concerning Arctic
benthic fauna. The latter has strong implications for contem
porary geopolitical issues in the region, including the ongoing
debate regarding deep-sea mining.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
During two research cruises on R/V Helmer Hanssen funded by
The University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway
(UiT), pieces of wood infested with wood-boring mollusks
were trapped and collected in the bottom trawl (Campelen
1800 bottom trawl) at two locations on Svalbard. In January
2016, a 7 m long log that was partly buried in anoxic sedi
ment was collected in Rijpfjorden, located on the northern side
of Nordaustlandet, Svalbard. (80°17'40.44''N, 22°18'0.07''E) at
250 m depth. A second piece of infested wood was collected on
June 26, 2019, on the west coast of Svalbard in Smeerenburgfjord
at 215 m depth.
Wood-boring mollusks collected from the wood were
brought back to the laboratory and identified following origi
nal descriptions of Xyloredo species (Turner, 1972). The col
lected specimens were found to comply with the description
of X. ingolfia and deposited in the collections at the Norwegian
University of Science and Technology Museum in Trondheim
(NTNU-VM 82062-82067; Bakken et al., 2024). In order to
undertake a thorough taxonomical identification, type speci
mens (paratypes) of X. ingolfia were borrowed from the Natural
History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen (NHMD-76456).
The newly collected mollusks were similar to the type spec
imens in proportion of valves and in the sub-rectangular and
ABSTRACT. We present the first record of a wood-boring, deep-sea mollusk belonging to the genus Xyloredo from the high Arctic.
Wood-boring mollusks of the genus Teredo have previously sporadically been documented in the Arctic, but only in shallow waters
strongly affected by relative warm Atlantic waters. Our finding not only identifies a new and until now unknown member of the
Arctic marine bottom fauna but also points to the fact that historical shipwrecks in the region may not be as well preserved as we
thought. Further, this study demonstrates how the natural and cultural histories of the Arctic are deeply intertwined, necessitating
interdisciplinary approaches to uncover connections and insights across domains that might otherwise remain obscure. Specifically,
we demonstrate how the discovery of wood-boring mollusks, inside a Siberian larch that sprouted in the Yenisei region in 1652 and
recovered in a bottom trawl offshore Svalbard, is directly linked to the Transpolar Drift. Analyzing how a tree ends up in a Svalbard
fjord more than 100 years after its death in 1904 also provides insights into how the logging industry in Siberia has significantly influ
enced human presence on and the history of Svalbard. Without extensive logging in Siberia, far less driftwood would have reached
Svalbard during the last 100 years. Hence, there would have been fewer wood falls to attract the wood-eating bivalves in its ecosys
tem, and as driftwood has been an important resource for firewood and building materials, Svalbard’s human history would most
likely have been different.