"Life is the most beautiful but the whale falls, a whale falls on all things." Whales, as the world's largest mammals, have been given the most romantic emotional color since ancient times, when the giant whales die, they slowly sink to the bottom of the sea, and the process of forming a deep-sea ecosystem is whale fall.
They are the well-deserved overlords of the ocean, like the guardian gods in the ocean, silently living in this vast expanse of water, until they quietly die, blessing all things. The whale fall is also known as the most romantic death in the world.
According to scientists speculating on the whale fossils found, the natural phenomenon of whale fall can be traced back to 30 million years ago. Whale fall is a very rare natural phenomenon, and fewer than 50 whale falles have been found worldwide.
Fortunately, however, in the 1,600-meter-deep seabed area of the South China Sea on the mainland, one case was fortunately found. So what happens to the whale after it dies? Why is whale fall so romantic and emotional? Let's take a look!
Whales as the world's largest mammals, as early as 45 million years ago in the middle of the Miocene, their ancestors have appeared on the earth, often up to tens of millions of years of evolution, whales have also evolved from the original amphibians, gradually evolved into marine animals, but they still retain the way of breathing with their lungs, so when the baby whale is born, the first skill they need to learn is how to breathe and swim in the water. Baby whales grow extremely fast, and depending on the species, they can grow to adult size in 1 to 5 years, and even weigh about 100 tons.
As a very intelligent animal, scientists have found that they have a certain ability to self-recognize. When whales feel that they are dying, they silently leave the group and wait quietly for death to come, and after they have finally jumped up and embraced the ocean gently, they will close their eyes forever and slowly sink into the depths of the ocean.
When whales die, their bodies decompose very long, and in general, they need to go through four stages, namely: 1. mobile scavenger stage; 2. opportunistic stage; 3. chemical energy self-cultivation stage; 4. reef stage.
During the initial mobile scavenger phase, the whale's posthumous body attracts a large number of carnivores. These include sharks, lobsters and a variety of eels. They began to eat a large amount of muscle tissue from the whale's body, and since an adult whale can reach more than 180 tons in size, and these muscle tissues account for about 90% of the whale's total weight, the whale carcass is enough to meet the needs of a variety of large carnivores and scavengers for up to 2 to 3 years.
When the muscle tissue of the whale carcass is eaten up, the second stage of the whale fall is ushered in: the opportunistic stage. At this time, the hairy, crustacean creatures living on the seabed will quickly follow the smell, and they will begin to further gnaw on the remaining flesh of the whale carcass, in addition, they will build their own habitat from the bones of the whale and reproduce on this basis. And when this stage is over, it will take about a decade or so.
At this time, the whale carcass is only a pile of white bones, although almost all animals in the ocean do not feed on whale bones, but these white bones are the favorite food of sulfur-loving bacteria, anaerobic bacteria and other decomposers. They began to further decompose substances such as lipids inside the bones, and combined with sulfates in the ocean to form various sulfides, a process that also attracted a large number of crustaceans to thrive here. And this process is even more long for decades or even centuries.
After this, the final stage of whale fall is ushered in: the reef stage. At this time, the whale bones have been completely devoid of any nutrients, so that their rock-like bones can provide shelter for the small animals on the seabed for hundreds of years to come, which is also the last trace left in the world after the whale dies, and it is also the last touch of warmth left for the seabed creatures.
Due to the lack of sunlight on the seabed, various nutrients are also relatively scarce, but the huge whale carcass can continue to provide nutrients for animals living on the seabed for hundreds of years to come, so all kinds of creatures living on the seabed will thrive near the whale carcass, which not only changes the living environment of the seabed, but even affects biological evolution and further spawns a variety of new life. According to scientists, in the hundreds of years when whales fell, they provided nutrients for at least 43 types of marine organisms and as many as 12,490 biological individuals, so "once a whale falls, everything lives" is the highest praise for whales that sink to the bottom of the sea after death.