The Annelid Community of a Natural Deep-sea Whale Fall off Eastern Australia

In the deep ocean, whale falls (deceased whales that sink to the seafloor) act as a boost of productivity in this otherwise generally food-limited setting, nourishing organisms from sharks to microbes during the various stages of their decomposition. Annelid worms are habitual colonizers of whale falls, with new species regularly reported from these settings and their systematics helping to resolve biogeographic patterns among deep-sea organic fall environments. During a 2017 expedition of the Australian research vessel RV Investigator to sample bathyal to abyssal communities off Australia’s east coast, a natural whale fall was opportunistically trawled at ~1000 m depth. Nine new species are described. The data has been acquired on the following RV Investigator voyage IN2017_V03 with links to additional metadata, datasets, events, deployments, publications etc. If this data has been used in any products, please acknowledge with the following: We acknowledge the use of the CSIRO Marine National Facility (https://ror.org/01mae9353) in undertaking this research.

Citation: Georgieva, Magdalena N., Helena Wiklund, Dino A. Ramos, Lenka Neal, Christopher J. Glasby, and Laetitia M. Gunton. 2023. The annelid community of a natural deep-sea whale fall off eastern Australia. In RV Investigator - Abyssal Annelida, ed. E. K. Kupriyanova and L. M. Gunton. Records of the Australian Museum 75(3): 167-213. https://doi.org/10.3853/j.2201-4349.75.2023.1800

Published: February 14, 2025 at 03:52

License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) License

URL: https://www.marine.csiro.au/ipt/resource?r=am_whale_fall_annelid