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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey

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Speaker 1: brain Stuff learned bogle bomb Here in ninety the Oregon

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Speaker 1: Department of Transportation encountered a huge problem. More precisely, the

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Speaker 1: agency face a predicament the size of well and eight

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Speaker 1: ton whale. That November, a dead sperm whale washed up

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Speaker 1: on the Oregon shore near the coastal city of Florence.

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Speaker 1: If you've ever caught a whiff of just a few

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Speaker 1: ounces of rotting meat in your fridge, you can imagine

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Speaker 1: the odor that sixteen thousand pounds that's over seven thousand

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Speaker 1: kilos would emit. Before that reason, the task of somehow

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Speaker 1: removing that mountain of flabby flesh was assigned to the

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Speaker 1: Department of Transportation. So how did the agency tackle such

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Speaker 1: a gargantuan task? The Department of Transportation decided that the

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Speaker 1: most efficient way to dispose of the whale was simply

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Speaker 1: to blow it up, rigging a half of dynamite to

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Speaker 1: the corps. It seemed like a shirt thing that, upon detonation,

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Speaker 1: the whale would instantaneously transform into chunks the size of

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Speaker 1: fish sticks that would splash harmlessly into the ocean. But

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Speaker 1: it was not their lucky day, While officials and onlookers

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Speaker 1: did witness an enormous explosion, the resulting debris flew toward

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Speaker 1: land instead of sea, showering whale guts on spectators and

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Speaker 1: nearby cars. Nine years later, when forty one dead sperm

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Speaker 1: whales drifted to Oregon shores, no one pulled out the explosives. Instead,

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Speaker 1: officials performed a makeshift cremation by burying and burning the

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Speaker 1: carcasses over the span of two days. In the case

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Speaker 1: of beached whales, like these, funeral proceedings aren't exactly ceremonious.

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Speaker 1: Carcasses hauled out to see may wash up again, and

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Speaker 1: buried ones can release shark attracting oil. If the area

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Speaker 1: is uninhabited, experts recommend the simplest option and leave the

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Speaker 1: body alone and let nature take its course. The main

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Speaker 1: caveat to that, however, is remembering to slice open the

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Speaker 1: abdomen to avoid a gassy build up inside the whale

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Speaker 1: that could cause a messy eruption. Yes, deceased beached whales

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Speaker 1: can and do explode all on their own. After the

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Speaker 1: whale dies, Gases, most specifically methane, build up in the

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Speaker 1: stomach and other organs. What usually happens next is that

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Speaker 1: the skin begins to disintegrate, at which point the whale

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Speaker 1: deflates slowly as the gas seeps out, but occasionally, very occasionally,

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Speaker 1: the skin of the whale, which is quite tough, just

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Speaker 1: keep stretching to accommodate the gas until it reaches a

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Speaker 1: breaking point. A residence in Taiwan witnessed this cetacean surprise

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Speaker 1: in two thousand four when researchers were transporting a dead

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Speaker 1: sperm whale that suddenly exploded on a city street. This

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Speaker 1: is why it's a good idea to stay away from

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Speaker 1: dead whales. And should you go poking and prodding a

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Speaker 1: methane filled whale, you're giving it ample reason to explode

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Speaker 1: before it has a chance to deflate naturally. You also

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Speaker 1: wouldn't want to fall into a decomposing whale. Do yourself

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Speaker 1: a favor and pay your respects from a distance. However,

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Speaker 1: though it's always sad to lose one of these majestic

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Speaker 1: and long lived animals, whales that don't wash up to

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Speaker 1: shore when they die actually benefit other ocean inhabitants because

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Speaker 1: it sparks the beginning of new life. When whales die

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Speaker 1: in the ocean, their bodies eventually sink to the bottom,

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Speaker 1: but once the body comes to rest, biologists refer to

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Speaker 1: this as a whale fall. As you might guess, other

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Speaker 1: fish and sea animals initially eat the meat off the carcass. However,

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Speaker 1: what came as a surprise to ocean researchers was the

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Speaker 1: finding that dead whales support entire ecosystems. In researchers at

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Speaker 1: the University of Hawaii discovered that at least twelve thousand,

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Speaker 1: four hundred and ninety individual organisms representing more than forty

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Speaker 1: three species were living off of a whalefall in the

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Speaker 1: deep North Pacific Ocean. But some of these sea creatures,

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Speaker 1: which included rare species of clams, worms, and eyeless shrimp,

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Speaker 1: weren't nibbling away at the remains. Instead, the colonies were

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Speaker 1: chemo autotrophic, which means they produce their own food via chemicals.

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Speaker 1: Chemo auto trophy is similar to photosynthesis and plants, except

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Speaker 1: it doesn't require sunlight, which is why it appears in

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Speaker 1: animals in places where the sun's rays don't penetrate the

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Speaker 1: depths of the water. Further investigation into these novel ecosystems

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Speaker 1: found that bacteria that overtake a whale skeleton feed off

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Speaker 1: of the bones, which consists of six fat. The bacteria

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Speaker 1: then produce hydrogen sulfide. Those thousands of chemo autotrophic sea

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Speaker 1: creatures convert the hydrogen sulfide into usable energy to thrive

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Speaker 1: to reproduce. A few years ago, oceanographers mapped out the

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Speaker 1: development stages of these underwater phenomena. First comes the mobile

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Speaker 1: scavenger stage, when fish strip around of the tissue from

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Speaker 1: the whale fall. After a few months or years, depending

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Speaker 1: on the size of the whale, marine worms and crustaceans

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Speaker 1: take up residence on and inside the remains, marking the

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Speaker 1: enrichment opportunist stage. Finally, the sulfophilic stage takes place, in

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Speaker 1: which the hydrogen sulfide emitting bacteria are established and helped

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Speaker 1: nourish chemo auditrific organisms. That last stage will last decades.

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Speaker 1: Similar environments car near cold seeps and hydrothermal vents on

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Speaker 1: the ocean floor, where hydrogen sulfide is released from breaks

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Speaker 1: between the Earth's tectonic plates. To illustrate the unique environment

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Speaker 1: created from whale falls, two new species of worms were

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Speaker 1: identified on a whale carcass living off of the whale

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Speaker 1: bone and resembling pink glow sticks with streamers. At first,

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Speaker 1: researchers thought that they could only see the females of

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Speaker 1: these newfound species, but they soon realized that the females

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Speaker 1: harbor the males inside of their rudimentary bodies, allowing them

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Speaker 1: to reproduce exponentially the worms attached to the whalefall during

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Speaker 1: the enrichment opportunist stage. By having large numbers of offspring,

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Speaker 1: these worms can propagate throughout the ocean, encountering other whalefalls

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Speaker 1: and restarting the process. These are only two of at

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Speaker 1: least sixteen new species that oceanographers have identified at whale falls.

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Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the articles what Happens to

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Speaker 1: Whales When they Die written by Kristen Conger and What

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Speaker 1: makes the Beached Whales Explode written by Kate Kirshner on

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Speaker 1: houstuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production by Heart

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Speaker 1: Radio in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com and

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