Discovery
The first known abyssal whale fall was discovered on 19 February 1977 by Navy bathyscaph pilots Lt Ken Hanson, ETCM(SS) George Ellis and LT Tom Vetter, diving in bathyscaph TRIESTE II (DSV-1) at 33° 13.0' N, 118° 32.5' W. The carcass had been scavenged completely free of flesh, but the entire skeleton remained intact and collapsed flat on the seafloor. TRIESTE II recovered a jawbone and phalanges. Given the size of the skeleton, lack of teeth and location west of Santa Catalina, the whale was probably a gray whale.
A whale fall was first observed by marine biologists led by University of Hawaii oceanographer Craig Smith in 1987, discovered accidentally by the submersible Alvin using scanning sonar at 1,240 m (4,070 ft) in the Catalina Basin. Whale falls have since been found by other scientists, and by military submarines. They can be found by using side-scan sonar to examine the ocean floor for large aggregations of matter.
The first sign that whale carcasses could host specialized animal communities came in 1854 when a new mussel species was extracted from a piece of floating whale blubber. Beginning in the 1960s, deep sea trawlers unintentionally recovered other new mollusc species including limpets (named Osteopelta) attached to whale bones.
Read more about this topic: Whale Fall
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“The new supplants the old. Yet men’s minds are stuffed with outworn bunk. Educating the young in the latest findings of authorities and scholars in the social sciences is important. It is equally important to devise ways and means for aiding the middle-aged and old to reexamine hang-over unscientific doctrines and ideas in the light of recent discovery and research.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)