Community Structure and Dynamics in a Newly Discovered Deep Sea Reducing Habitat: Lipid-Rich Whale Bones

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Rich animal communities fueled by carbon producing microorganisms are known from a variety of reducing habitats at the deep-sea floor including vents, seeps, and organic-rich sediments; these habitats generally are linked to the boundaries between plates and/or areas of high coastal productivity. During a recent dive with the submersible, ALVIN, in the Catalina Basin, scientists discovered a community fueled by a novel source of reduced carbon compounds --- the skeleton of a 20-m long whale. Preliminary evidence suggests that whale remains may provide persistent and abundant reducing habitats with faunal communities similar to those of seeps, vents and organic-rich muds. However, the significance of whale-skeleton reducing habitats cannot be rigorously evaluated without much better knowledge of at least: (1) the source and flux rates of reducing compounds, (2) community composition (including vent-seep affinities), and (3) community dynamics (e.g., persistence times) associated with these carbon rich microbial systems. This research will provide a descriptive and experimental program, using the Catalina Basin whale-fall as a case study, to address these three topics.