Whale Fall

A whale fall is the sinking of a dead whale's carcass to the ocean floor, typically to the bathyal or abyssal depths below 1,000 meters, where the remains create a localized ecosystem that can feed deep-sea organisms for decades. The cold temperatures and high pressure at these depths slow decomposition, and the carcass is colonized in a succession of stages, beginning with mobile scavengers that strip the soft tissue and ending with chemosynthetic bacteria that can continue consuming lipids stored in the bones for fifty to one hundred years. A single large whale carcass can contain around two tonnes of carbon, comparable to the amount that would otherwise settle onto a hectare of abyssal seafloor over one to two centuries, and whale falls scattered along migration routes are thought to act as stepping stones that let specialized deep-sea species disperse between habitats; commercial whaling has sharply reduced the number of whale falls in the ocean. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/