The Prolific Afterlife
By: Crispin T.S. Little
,Oceanographers found a whale's carcass at the ocean floor in Santa Catalina Basin.
- The whale appeared to have been dead for years, yet it became a source of shelter for organisms such as worms, clams, and snails.
- Suggests that whale remnants can serve as a host for specialized communities.
- An oceanographer named Smith, further researched the skeleton site of the whale, and found that this is not a rare event.
- The mollusks that were on a skeleton had chemosynthetic bacteria that draw energy from inorganic chemicals.
- The whales appear to go through 3 stages once it hits the ocean floor.
- 1. mobile scavenger stage, where sharks and other consumers take most of the tissues of the whale.
- 2. The whale is colonized by high-density animals, but low in diversity.
- 3. Sulfophilic stage, where the anaerobic bacteria break down the lipids in the bones of the whales.
- Around 69,000 whales die annually.
- Distance between eac whale should be around 12 km which allows larvae to spread
In 1987, Craig Smith and his group were in an expedition mapping the sea floor in Santa Catalina Basin. On the final dive, there was an object detected by sonar, which was found to be a carcass of a whale. The skeleton had several different small marine organisms that seem to flourish due to the whale's bones. These skeletons were attracting chemosynthetic bacteria, which are bacteria that convert inorganic chemicals into energy. Smith's colleagues were intrigued and eventually conducted a research which consisted of sinking dead whales that have washed ashore and checking on its' process regularly. Smith found that the process takes a relatively long time to have a community thriving on the whale. First the majority of the blubber and the tissues must be eaten away by some fish and sharks, then the anaerobic bacteria break down the lipids in the bones of the whales, and finally the communities colonize.
Reading this article, I am more aware of the different roles of organisms in the environment and how all of them are connected in some link. That death of whales are not simply the end of one's life, but also a beginning of new ones. It seems evident that there are symbiotic relationships everywhere; that there will always be a connection of one species to the next that eventually provide more context to the web that is the ecosystem. There are natural processes in life that give meaning even to the death of other species, furthermore the cycles of life and death are blurred by the species in the environment.
Reading this article, I am more aware of the different roles of organisms in the environment and how all of them are connected in some link. That death of whales are not simply the end of one's life, but also a beginning of new ones. It seems evident that there are symbiotic relationships everywhere; that there will always be a connection of one species to the next that eventually provide more context to the web that is the ecosystem. There are natural processes in life that give meaning even to the death of other species, furthermore the cycles of life and death are blurred by the species in the environment.
So What?
Death can symbolize a new beginning and new lives; as well as the growth of new species.
Says who:
Crispin T.S. Little
What if:
What if the we never realized the symbiotic relationship between these species, will we realize that the relationship between species are very much important to the survival of another?
What does this remind me of:
This reminds me of the biogeochemical cycles, and how it seems Earth is just made up of endless and various types of cycles that seem to overlap.
Death can symbolize a new beginning and new lives; as well as the growth of new species.
Says who:
Crispin T.S. Little
What if:
What if the we never realized the symbiotic relationship between these species, will we realize that the relationship between species are very much important to the survival of another?
What does this remind me of:
This reminds me of the biogeochemical cycles, and how it seems Earth is just made up of endless and various types of cycles that seem to overlap.