Whale Fall Cafe

When a whale carcass lands on the deep ocean floor, a caf opens for business, and the diners don't stop munching, sipping, digging, crawling, burrowing, and rooting their way through the menu until the cupboards are bare.One medium-size whale carcass delivers as much food to the dark, cold ocean depths as 4,000 years of sinking food particles. When a dead whale arrives, the caf opens for business, and who better than Dan Tavis to show us the bizarre deep-ocean diners who show up?Hagfish, zombie worms, sleeper sharksthis group of patrons is stranger than the denizens of the Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars. A fish in a lab coat, piloting a deep-sea submersible, is our guide to the weirdly fascinating goings-on miles beneath the ocean surface. The backmatter includes rare whale-fall photos from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Dr. Robert Vrijenhoek of MBARI and Dr. Craig Smith, a deep-ocean ecologist at the University of Hawaii, have helped Jacquie Sewell to ensure scientific accuracy.