Wow, octopus.
Whale fall.
Whoaaah whale fall!!
That is phenomenal.
We can't stop can we?
We can stop and come back if you want.
Let's take our time with it, and then we have to come back anyways.
Oh my god there's so many.
This is worth a stop.
No way.
It's like a baleen whale and you can still see the baleen.
Yes.
The baleen is still there.
This is great.
Someone who has Twitter tell Twitter, we don't have one.
Haha, somebody tell Twitter, Twitter is with us right now.
Oh my goodness.
Wow, this is incredible.
The dinner bell ringing, right?
We are so excited up here, just saying.
Greg can I zoom?
Yeah, let's go ahead and zoom in.
Yeah, dinner is served.
Do we have any bone eating worms?
And Bridge, if we could track a line back.
I don't see any red tentacles or anything.
I see some brown fuzz on the vertebrae, I mean on the ribs.
So those might be...
Look at the Argus view!
Oh yeah!
Check out the Argus view.
It's so perfect.
So what do we estimate the length of that is?
How long is Hercules?
2.5 meters.
In length, from forward to back.
So this looks like maybe a 4 - 5 meter whale.
Yeah.
There is still soft tissue.
This is crazy!
There definitely was something big in the Meso.
People watching, we'll definitely come back here, we're swinging a little too far, and
spend some time here this is definitely worth it.
Yeah, I marked a target and we'll go past it and come back.
I wonder if this is some of the octopus's last meal before they make their way over.
We should get the sexes of them.
We'll come back, don't worry.
Ok, this is awesome.
It's partially digested still.This will actually be pretty good, because we'll go down the
slope, and then on the way back we'll be able to hit the slope back up.
Look at the sediment to the left of the whale.
Yeah, there's something on it.
Growing.
Yeah, bacterial mats, worms, something.
I'm thinking bacterial mat of some kind.
Look at them!
Oh!
That's not bacterial mat.
No, they are worms.
Look at that!
So yesterday we were talking about seasonality in the deep see, and how episodic falls of
food are a...bonanza I think is the word.
And here's a bonanza!
Oh this is great!
Just think the amount of calories in a whale here.
I mean, the equivalent of so much marine snow it's hard to even compare.
Oh look at the blubber on the right side!
It's not even digested on all the way this is so cool to see part way through.
Ok, so what's happening is the ship is tracking a line and moving along as we were moving
towards the cone.
So the ship is moving Argus away.
Hercules only has a certain amount of tether away from Argus, so as the ship is moving
we can't just immediately stop.
So we're gonna probably pull away from this a little, but we're in the process of stopping
and turning the ship back around and coming right here.
Yeah, we're about 450 meters, so the ship is now coming back.
We're going to get pulled towards the ship and then come back.
We're gonna do a little yo-yo.
I'm surprised there's no sharks.
So whale falls are a really cool way to think about the ecological idea of succession.
What is the fuzz on those bones?
The fuzz on those bones is...the common name I remember hearing was Bone Eating Snotflower
worm, but the genus is Osedax.
These are worms that have symbiotic associations with bacteria.
They have no more gut themselves, instead they have these rootlets that burrow into
the bone and then the bacteria are able to metabolize the fats and oils that are in the
bone itself.
Wow.
My college at MBARI, you known Shannon Johnson, she's worked a lot with these bone eating
worms.
She's been a part of naming several of them.
One of them was after Pink Floyd.
I forget the name of the top of my head, I'll find it.
We're all going nuts, but she would be going even more nuts.
Get on the live feed!
Tune in!
Alright we're about to get pulled off.
Ok, we'll be coming back.
Has it been generally known that octopus are scavengers.
That's a great question.
They're mostly predators, but why not be opportunistic.
Definitely, where food is so limited I'd imagine scavenging is a great strategy.
Your food doesn't run away