From Atmos, May 28:
In Death, New Life: The Science And Symbolism of a Whale Fall
When a whale dies, its body creates a new mini ecosystem on the ocean floor—a process full of biological and poetic lessons for those willing to learn them.
“There is no end
To what a living world
Will demand of you.”
—Octavia E. Butler
When a whale dies, its massive body sinks. This colossal creature—an enormous, graceful mammoth of the sea—tumbles, sways, and ultimately free-falls to the ocean floor. The whale’s descent, spanning the vast gulf between the surface and the abyss, is a kind of miracle, bridging two worlds: the illuminated surface and the shadowy underworld.
There is so much we don’t know about the deep ocean, but what we do know is astonishing. The ocean’s deepest point extends approximately 36,000 feet below the surface. Beyond 600 feet, light no longer penetrates, making photosynthesis impossible, yet 98% of marine life resides on or near the sea floor. Life at these depths depends almost entirely on “marine snow”—organic matter drifting down from the ocean’s upper layers.
When a whale sinks to the seabed, it sets off an extraordinary chain of events. A single whale fall can blanket an area of 50 square meters, roughly 538 square feet, on the ocean floor, explained Dr. Craig Smith, a professor at the University of Hawaii and a leading expert on whale falls. In that single moment, it delivers a bounty of food equivalent to what small particles would provide over 200 to 2,000 years.
It’s an enormous input of organic matter that sticks around for centuries. “We found bones in the middle of the Pacific from whales that have been extinct for over 100,000 years,” Smith said....
....MUCH MORE
Our interest in whales is usually a bit less poetic: whale dung. And how to make some money off the sea scat, being that it is a way to sequester carbon.
If interested see:Cetacean dung: we track it so you don't have to.
And more generally: