Scavengers Of The Ocean Floor

Since light and food is so scarce fish have developed large eyes slow metabolisms weak muscles and elongated bodies.

Scavengers of the ocean floor.

A whale fall may occur as frequently in the deep ocean as one in every 20 25 kilometers of seabed. Do you think this is an example of succession. On the sea floor these carcasses can create complex localized ecosystems that supply sustenance to deep sea organisms for decades. Herding zombies into deep benthik depth would over time dissolve the flesh.

This is unlike in shallower waters where a whale carcass will be consumed by scavengers over a relatively short period of time. Salt water at deep ocean pressure becomes a sort of salt acid as high pressure concentrates saltwater into brine. Very little or no light penetrates to this level pressures can reach 1000 atms. Here many different scavengers gather to enjoy a dead tuna carcass.

Some of them find their environmental niche in the deep ocean waters an area that below 1000 fathoms. That brine leaches away bone calcium and breaks down soft tissue. December 20 2019 welcome to the feast in the deep. The first animals to pounce had been scavengers such as sleeper sharks and slimy snake like hagfish.

Scavengers of the deep ocean floor. Way vol dun 26 79 52 91 ofer s bound journal first floor blue stone table way vol dun 52 43 14 39 julien s left boot near the bones close to the cliff way vol dun 47 06 75 77 zach s canteen under the stairs. Whale falls were first observed in the late 1970s with the development of deep sea robotic ex. Crabs will eat just about anything and are known as professional garbage hunters.

Inevitably the scavengers had scattered pieces of flesh around the whale carcass and native microbes had multiplied quickly around those scraps. Many creatures thrive in oceans waters. A whale fall occurs when the carcass of a whale has fallen onto the ocean floor at a depth greater than 1 000 m in the bathyal or abyssal zones. In the course of about six months they had eaten most of the skin and muscle.

Giant isopods crabs and deep sea eels devour the carrion leaving nothing but a skeleton on the ocean floor. They have no eyes mouth or stomach but are able to eat by secreting an acid through their skin that allows them to dissolve the bones of dead animals and unlock the fats and proteins inside. Since scavengers are limited on the floor of the ocean several years may be required for the consumption of whales. Dubbed zombie worms these polychaetes of the genus osedax were discovered living in the bones of a gray whale carcass 10 000 feet deep.

Lobsters have even been seen burying dead fish and digging them up a little at a time to eat.