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Animals in the deep ocean rely on detritus (marine snow) as their main source of food. On rare occasions, the remains of large plants and animals make their way to the seafloor, known as a food-fall.
For a long time it was thought that food-falls would be too infrequent to support specialist species, although recent studies have suggested that these habitats may play a larger ecologically significant role than previously thought.
Previous studies into food-falls have been restricted to either porpoise, dolphin, or whale carcasses, and there is speculation surrounding the ability of non-mammalian food-falls to host the same whale-fall communities. In a new study, researchers Nicholas Higgs, Andrew Gates, and Daniel Jones report on a chance encounter with four large "fish-falls" on the deep seafloor off Angola, including a whale shark, and three mobulid rays. Finding four large carcasses in such a small region suggests large food-falls may be more common than previously thought. These large "fish-falls", however, did not appear to support the same fauna that has been seen at mammalian food-falls. This is not surprising as elasmobranchs have tough dentriculate skin that makes accessing flesh difficult and their flesh contains high level of ammonia that may make it unpalatable. Also, elasmobranchs lack the fatty blubber and mineral rich skeletons that marine mammals posses.
Read the full article: Fish Food in the Deep Sea: Revisiting the Role of Large Food-Falls
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