PROCEEDINGS of the Third International Symposium on

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Hydrothermal Heat Vent and Seep Biology

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University of California San Diego

2005

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Decomposing whale carcasses on the deep sea floor possess unique and dense biological

communities that are associated in/around carcasses due to the presence of large amounts of

organic materials. At least 43 mega/macrofaunal species associated with whale carcasses at 1240

m in the Santa Catarina Basin off California (Bennett et al., 1994). Two polychaete species of the

genus Osedax, O. rubiplumus Rouse, Goffredi and Vrijenhoek, 2004 and O. frankpressi Rouse,

Goffredi and Vrijenhoek, 2004, were described as unique worms from the bones of a gray whale

carcass at a depth of 2891 m in Monterey Bay, California (Rouse et al., 2004). These species were

placed in the family Siboglinidae including vestimentiferans and pogonophores, which lack digestive

tracts as adults. The Osedax worms were characterized as having root systems running in whale

bone marrow, lacking digestive tracts, and dwarf males. The reliance on whale bones, hydrocarbon

degradation, and the unusual morphology of the symbiont-bearing ovisac and root system of these

worms as well as particular symbiotic bacteria make these organisms very unique in the animal

kingdom (Rouse et al., 2004).