What happens after a whale carcass sinks to the bottom of the sea?
On the day before Thanksgiving, 2011, Greg Rouse, a trim marine biologist in his fifties, was tidying his lab at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in La Jolla, California. Rouse studies the worms and other small animals that inhabit the deep sea. He was organizing his microscopes, dissection supplies, and jars of deep-sea critters when he received a long-anticipated e-mail.
On Thanksgiving morning, Welsh set out in his catamaran—rusty chains on board—and sailed south. The next day, he met up with Rouse, Kisfaludy, and a growing group of intrigued friends at the dead whale. It rested on the sand, immovable. At high tide, however, the carcass began to float, and the team made its move. They tied seven ropes around the whale’s tail and sailed west. Several hours passed. The weather was crisp and sunny, and there was little boat traffic.
On a breezy June morning, we set out aboard the Western Flyer, a boxy white ship run with the no-frills efficiency of a floating industrial platform. As we lurched out of San Diego, I frantically set up a shipboard lab, preparing chemicals and sampling jars. By the time we reached Rosebud’s location, the wind had risen and the seas had grown choppy. Belowdecks, the cresting waves reverberated between the twin hulls. Using a compact crane, engineers lowered the jeep-sized R.O.V.
As Rosebud came into view, we saw colorful microbial carpets light up the screens—plush white, yellow, and orange mats, each a community of microbes precisely tuned to their chemical milieu. The whale’s towering rib cage had become a cathedral for worms, snails, and crabs, which grazed beneath its buttresses. A few hungry hagfish slithered through the skull’s eye sockets. When the cameras zoomed in, we saw that the bones were covered in red splotches.
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