Imagine a Thanksgiving buffet bonanza – nearly a mile underwater, in bone-chilling cold and as dark as a dungeon.
That’s what startled scientists recently discovered off the Monterey coast.
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In the deep sea, a dead whale is providing an unexpected feast for creepy crawly ocean organisms, from tiny red worms to a ghostly fleet of octopuses.
“It’s fascinating – an absolute oasis of food,” said marine biologist Chad King, lead scientist of an expedition of the exploration vessel Nautilus, operated by the nonprofit Ocean Exploration Trust with researchers from the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
“It was a very special sighting that science rarely comes across,” said King, a Gilroy resident whose team spotted the carcass last month while exploring the central California coast.
A dead whale doesn’t rest in peace.
As soon as its huge body sinks to the ocean floor, it becomes an instant meal in a hostile environment that’s a virtual ‘food desert,’ devoid of any nourishment.
For the hungry creatures that live there, it is a sudden and unexpected bounty. King said a dead whale can deliver the energy equivalent of hundred years’ worth of food in one fell swoop.
Normally deep sea creatures survive on the tiny “marine snow” that drifts from higher waters, such as dead plankton, shell fragments and poop.
But a carcass, called a “whale fall,” creates a rich and impromptu ecosystem unto itself, according to research first conducted in 1988 by a team of researchers at the University of Hawaii, led by Craig Smith.
There are likely hundreds of thousands of these carcasses, called “whale falls,” along the heavily traveled migratory routes such as the California coast.
But their degradation – biology’s vanishing act — is almost never witnessed.
The Nautilus team wasn’t looking for whales. On its final dive of this year’s season, it was exploring a geological feature called the Davidson Seamount.
A watery equivalent of Donner Summit, this underwater mountain rises about 7,000 feet from the seafloor about 70 miles off the Monterey coast.
The sea mount is too deep and dangerous for human divers. It’s perpetually dark, with bone-crushing water pressure and temperatures that hover at 34 degrees Fahrenheit, nearly freezing.
So Nautilus uses a remotely operated vehicle, or R.O.V., with powerful lights, cameras and stamina.
Its scientists can sit comfortably above board, sipping coffee and chatting as they watch the ROV’s images.
On this trip, they were hoping to revisit a 2018 discovery: a never-before-seen “octopus garden” of thousands of females, brooding with eggs. Tucked into bowling ball-sized holes in the rocky terrain, the aggregations of mothers were lined up in vents of warm water. Their eight arms faced out to cover their bodies and precious offspring.
Instead they saw a more haunting sight: the corpse of a young whale, lying on its back. About 13 to 16 feet long, the species has not yet been confirmed.
Likely dead for about four months, all skin and muscle had already been eaten. But its baleen, some blubber, and a few internal organs remained.
Scavengers like crabs, squat lobsters and eelpout fish stripped the skeleton of blubber. Eels wrapped around its ribs, in postprandial torpor.
Remarkable red Osedax worms – “with filaments, like chia pets,” said King — had crawled inside its bones.
Deep-sea octopuses slithered around the whale’s towering rib cage. Some large brown grenadier fish floated nearby.
In a live-stream broadcast, the crew speculated whether one long structure was an aorta. They laughed when an octopus clung to equipment, photobombing the view.
The ROV took samples — worms, bone fragments, sediment cores and more – which are now back on land and being scrutinized by scientists.
And the whale will continue to offer life after death, a food boon on the ravenous ocean floor.