Whale Fall Sustains 31 Taxa for 21 Years Off Vancouver Island

5 articles · Updated · Gizmodo · May 21

A whale carcass 1,300 meters deep off Vancouver Island has supported a thriving seafloor community for at least 21 years, with researchers saying its bones could keep feeding life for another decade.
Four site visits between 2012 and 2024 found the skeleton barely changed; vertebrae shrank just 1.4%, and bone-eating Osedax worms seen by 2023 signaled the long-lasting sulfophilic stage.
Biodiversity around the carcass also held up over time, with observed deep-sea taxa rising from 29 in 2009 to 31 in 2023, including tube worms, clams and gastropods.
The Frontiers in Marine Science study says such whale falls help explain how deep-sea ecosystems develop, but warns warming waters and expanding low-oxygen seafloor zones could threaten these habitats on the Cascadia Margin.

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