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The succession of a whale carcass

by Michael Terren

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1.
Pipe 04:16
2.
Lumen 06:48
3.
LH 10ths 02:21
4.
1/30Hz roll 07:36
5.
6.
Succession 08:23

about

The blue whale skeleton hanging from the roof of Hackett Hall at the Western Australian Museum Boola Bardip beached in 1897 near Undalup/Busselton. He is named Otto, after the taxidermist who stripped its flesh and bleached its bones in the sun. Otto was a late adolescent, a twenty-four-metre bundle of testosterone. How he died is unclear. Usually blue whale strandings are a result of disease that weakens and disorients them, and they usually die before they beach. Orcas, however, are known predators. One study suggests nearly half of blue whales photographed off Western Australia have scars consistent with an orca attack, and a pod of orcas was recently filmed killing a juvenile blue whale off the south coast. When a whale dies, their decomposition gases can build and float the carcass. Sometimes the carcass will float to shore. Most of the time, they are scavenged by sharks and sink to the ocean floor.

Up to 4000 metres deep, an ecosystem adapted to the remarkable good luck of a whale fall will rapidly colonise the carcass. The worms of the genus Osedax are among the first to settle in and the last to leave. They feed exclusively on whale bones, dissolving them by secreting acid and consuming their fatty interiors. Considering how niche their food supply is, they are highly diverse with over thirty species—some whale falls have several species of Osedax even within the same bone. They are one of the most sexually dimorphous genera known to science. The female worm is a few centimetres long, while hundreds of microscopic males live their lives entirely inside the female, allowing it to constantly reproduce and release fertilised ova across the ocean depths. It only takes a few years for a whale’s bones to be consumed. After that, it’s a long wait until the next whale fall, but some Osedax will be there, somehow, in spite of outrageous contingency and a whale population about a tenth of what it was in 1897.

Continue reading: tinyletter.com/michaelterren/letters/the-succession-of-a-whale-carcass

credits

released March 23, 2022

Recorded live at Aesoteric, 25 February 2022 in Hackett Hall, the Western Australian Museum Boola Bardip, underneath Otto's skeleton. Recorded and produced by Michael Terren, on Whadjuk Noongar country.

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Michael Terren

tinyletter.com/michaelterren

Also in the band Pale Ribbons Tossed into the Dark prtd.bandcamp.com

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