Comments on: Won’t They Think of the Poor Bone-Eating Worms?

By: Carnival of the Blue #35: The Better Late Than Never Edition | OH, FOR THE LOVE OF SCIENCE!

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 02:28:42 +0000

[...] “Won’t They Think of the Poor Bone-Eating Worms?” Kevin Z (of Deep Sea News) writes, “The troubling aspect to me is the general idea [...]

By: puzzled

puzzled — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:57:47 +0000

how long would it take for a human skeleton to decay in sea water?

By: Kevin Zelnio

Kevin Zelnio — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 01:14:44 +0000

Yes! We have turtle, cow and 2 species of whale bone down right now off of NC. My labmates saw them on pig or goat bones in PNG that were thrown overboard from ship mess. Also, Vrijenhoek and colleagues documented them on cow bones deployed in Monterey Canyon. I doubt fish bones would provide much of a habitat. Certain fish perhaps, but the bones are too small and would decay much faster I imagine. Some fish might have more lipids in their bones though.

By: FishGuyDave

FishGuyDave — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:30:06 +0000

I’d be curious whether you could create artificial bone-eating worm habitat with, say, cow bones. If nothing else, no MMPA rules about disturbing non-whale bones (and their infauna) for transport back to the lab and more detailed study. However, that’s pretty off-topic…

Without seeing Dr. Pershing’s calculations, I’d be hard-pressed to agree that the relatively minor amount of whale removals today means more than a footnote in the global carbon budget.