Driftwood is wood that has been washed onto a shore or beach of a sea, lake, or river by the action of winds, tides or waves.
Driftwood on a pebble beach
A beach on the West Coast of New Zealand covered by drift wood.
Driftwood provides a perch for a bald eagle on Fir Island, Washington.
Driftwood on the beach in Sitges, Spain
The shipworms, also called Teredo worms or simply Teredo, are marine bivalve molluscs in the family Teredinidae, a group of saltwater clams with long, soft, naked bodies. They are notorious for boring into wood that is immersed in seawater, including such structures as wooden piers, docks, and ships; they drill passages by means of a pair of very small shells ("valves") borne at one end, with which they rasp their way through. They are sometimes called "termites of the sea". Carl Linnaeus assigned the common name Teredo to the best-known genus of shipworms in the 10th edition of his taxonomic magnum opus, Systema Naturæ (1758).
Shipworm
Teredo navalis from Popular Science Monthly, September 1878
Disposition of the main organs in a shipworm. GDA: anterior digestive gland; GDV: ventral digestive gland, with its orifices in the stomach. Orifices uri. et gen., urinary and gential orifices. The left ventricle is sectioned near its base. The nerve ganglion is in blue. The distance between pallets and foot spans several time the animal's diameter.
Teredolites borings in a modern wharf piling. The US one cent coin in the lower left of this image is 19 mm across.
