Microbial communities associated with submerged whale carcasses.

Whale carcasses on the sea floor are a rich source of organic matter for the organisms that inhabit the ocean depths. Tubeworms, mollusks, and crustaceans, similar to those found at hydrothermal vents, colonize these whale falls. Sulfate-reducing bacteria oxidize the organic matter, particularly the lipid-rich skeleton, producing sulfide that chemosynthetic microorganisms use for energy. These chemosynthetic microorganisms form the base of the food chain and, as symbionts, supply energy for the fauna on the whale carcass. Samples for comparative genomics have been obtained from a microbial mat and rib bone of a gray whale carcass at a depth of 1674 meters in the Santa Cruz Basin of the Pacific Ocean, and from a whale bone at a depth of 560 meters in the Southern Ocean off the west Antarctic Peninsula shelf. The WGS project and sequences deposited into the Trace Archive can be found using the Project data link.