Scientists have conducted a very unique and strange experiment in order to study the ecosystems at the bottom of the oceans and the food pyramid and their interrelationship with each other in the depths.
To carry out this experiment, scientists drowned a huge dead whale on the ocean floor, and monitored the creatures that would come to visit it, as they drowned a sperm whale after it was carried in a rented barge off the coast of Faial Island, Portugal.
According to the new report published on the “hakaimagazine” website, the team led by Frank Wirth, director of the “Pico Sport” company, which specializes in monitoring and photographing whales, faced difficulty moving the huge payload of eight tons?
And the experiment began in 2015, when the team divided the whale into a group of blocks weighing 500 kilograms, and they threw it into the ocean waters, to finally settle on the bottom.
According to the article, the drowning whale provided one of the most impressive shots in a documentary series called “Blue Planet”. But now, years later, further research and study of the lifeless corpse at the bottom has brought scientists closer to understanding how life evolved in the depths.
Over the course of a year, the research and imaging team went down to the bottom to monitor the body about six times, and in the last operation, one year after the whale sank, scientists monitored a very large shift in the vicinity of the area in which the whale was drowned.
In the captured images, the shocked team can be seen, after their luck, the whale’s body turned into an oasis full of life in the depths of the ocean, where the lifeless corpse was surrounded by many creatures.
According to the article, the polychaete worms were searching for the last bits of meat on the bones, a few stray crabs were crawling around, and the corpse also acquired a frightening black aura as the decomposing tissue had depleted the oxygen in the surrounding sediment.
The analysis of the corpse revealed the presence of animals inhabiting the corpse, a mixture of several types of polychaete worms that colonized whale bones, which indicates that the death of giant whales could indeed be a springboard for new life on the ocean floor.