Ecomare

Many benthic animals eat plankton, the freely floating minuscule plants and animals of the sea; others eat the leftovers of dead sea inhabitants. Benthic animals, in turn, are food for other animals in the sea: they make up part of the diet for fish living on the bottom (benthic fish) and certain birds. Benthic fish have developed all sorts of methods for filtering their food out of the water, sucking it out of the bottom or grazing.
Filter feeders filter their food particles out of the water. Pygospio elegans (a tube worm) sticks its tentacles out of its tube. It catches food particles with a sticky liquid which runs down its tentacles. Shellfish such as mussels gather their food particles with their gills which are covered in ciliate (trilling hairs). The ciliate help transport the food to the mouth.

Not all shellfish are exclusively filter feeders. For example, Baltic tellin have a long and movable inflowing siphon, with which they sweep the floor surface and suck up food particles like a mini vacuum cleaner.
Lugworms take bites of the sea bottom and digest the edible parts in their intestinal canal. In order to obtain enough food, these animals must process a lot of sand. This worm lives in a U-shaped tube. At one end, the animal eats up the sand. The edible parts are extracted in the body and the rest is pressed out of the other end, forming the well-known 'tooth paste piles'.
The amphipod Corophium volutator, which lives in a tunnel in the mud flats, occasionally comes out of its tunnel to scrape off the top layer of the surface with its two long antennae. He takes his catch into his tunnel where he searches through it for edible food. The inedible material is redeposited outside his tunnel.
Grazers withdraw their food from the floor surface. Laver spire shells will crawl over the bottom in order to graze upon the one-celled algae.

The shallow parts of the tidal regions are extremely difficult to live in. First of all, the mud flats are exposed two times a day. The animals which live there must be able to withstand the change in water levels as well as the sharp changes in temperature and the salinity. Some animals avoid the unfavourable conditions by temporarily departing for other areas. Shrimp and crabs move to the channels during low tide and return to the banks with high tide. In the autumn, they migrate to the open sea. Other animals protect themselves from the cold by digging down deep in the sand. The nereis pelagica (a sort rag-worm) crawls down to 60 centimeters under the surface in the winter. Cockles release a kind of anti-freeze substance into their body fluids to prevent freezing. Despite this precaution, many cockles will freeze to death during severe winters.

Many benthic animals eat plankton, the freely floating minuscule plants and animals of the sea; others eat the leftovers of dead sea inhabitants. Benthic animals, in turn, are food for other animals in the sea: they make up part of the diet for fish living on the bottom (benthic fish) and certain birds. Benthic fish have developed all sorts of methods for filtering their food out of the water, sucking it out of the bottom or grazing.
Filter feeders filter their food particles out of the water. Pygospio elegans (a tube worm) sticks its tentacles out of its tube. It catches food particles with a sticky liquid which runs down its tentacles. Shellfish such as mussels gather their food particles with their gills which are covered in ciliate (trilling hairs). The ciliate help transport the food to the mouth.

Not all shellfish are exclusively filter feeders. For example, Baltic tellin have a long and movable inflowing siphon, with which they sweep the floor surface and suck up food particles like a mini vacuum cleaner.
Lugworms take bites of the sea bottom and digest the edible parts in their intestinal canal. In order to obtain enough food, these animals must process a lot of sand. This worm lives in a U-shaped tube. At one end, the animal eats up the sand. The edible parts are extracted in the body and the rest is pressed out of the other end, forming the well-known 'tooth paste piles'.
The amphipod Corophium volutator, which lives in a tunnel in the mud flats, occasionally comes out of its tunnel to scrape off the top layer of the surface with its two long antennae. He takes his catch into his tunnel where he searches through it for edible food. The inedible material is redeposited outside his tunnel.
Grazers withdraw their food from the floor surface. Laver spire shells will crawl over the bottom in order to graze upon the one-celled algae.