Lesson 15

 As you saw in the video, when whales die they fall to the seafloor. This is called a whale fall. Before a whale fall, down on the seafloor, there are very few food sources and there is no light. A dead whale creates a whole new part of the system on the bottom of the ocean.

In the video, the whale’s body is mostly bones. The octopuses and eelpouts (a type of fish) eat parts of the dead whale but not the bones. The snot worms (the brown, hairy-looking decomposers on the bones in the video) burrow into the bones to get the fats and proteins trapped inside. It can take many years for this to happen!