Whale fall
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
The video's incessent patter
Reveals a trait rather amiss;
Though charmingly exhuberent,
And with requisite meters,
It lacks any concept of rhyme.Osedax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osedax
Thanks for the video!
[1] Hvalreki (whale drift) in Icelandic law, from Jónsbók in 1281: https://www.althingi.is/lagas/150b/1281000.401.html
Now, this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently killed Sperm Whale is a very curious thing; nor has any fisherman yet adequately accounted for it. Usually the dead Sperm Whale floats with great buoyancy, with its side or belly considerably elevated above the surface. If the only whales that thus sank were old, meagre, and broken-hearted creatures, their pads of lard diminished and all their bones heavy and rheumatic; then you might with some reason assert that this sinking is caused by an uncommon specific gravity in the fish so sinking, consequent upon this absence of buoyant matter in him. But it is not so. For young whales, in the highest health, and swelling with noble aspirations, prematurely cut off in the warm flush and May of life, with all their panting lard about them; even these brawny, buoyant heroes do sometimes sink.
Entire patterns of thought become antiquated as our communication wiring adapts to the ever increasing pace of society. Social media is driving dopamine hits from shorter and shorter forms of engagement.
It's amusing to think that Harry Potter might one day read like an opaque relic.
your brain will click right in.
> Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
I think you are extrapolating a little too much from your personal experience. An obvious counterexample to our society trending to "shorter and shorter forms of engagement" is the rise of long-form podcasts and long-form independent reporting.
Plenty of people still enjoy literature and the way in which it can convey ideas that non-fiction does not. My impression is that you'd have the same reaction to more recent fiction by, say, Cormac McCarthy or David Foster Wallace. I'm not sure Harry Potter is exactly a fair comparison of a work that aims for the same register as Moby Dick. As far as I know, 19th century literature with a simpler prose style (for example Sherlock Holmes or Poe's short stories) is still entirely accessible to someone with basic reading comprehension.
See the section on the impact of whaling:
> However, it is suggested that the removal of large whales might have reduced the total biomass of the deep sea by more than 30%.[24] Whales stored massive amounts of carbon that were exported to the deep sea during whale fall events. Whaling has thus also reduced the ability of the deep sea to sequester carbon.[24]
When I woke up this morning, I had no idea that deep sea whale carcases would constitute an entire hidden global ecosystem, but that's just another day on HN I guess.
The sheer biomass we've removed from the ocean is staggering though, and the cascading effect on the deep sea ecosystems must be immense. There is so much less food to fall down there now.
I'm on the BC coast, with a few acres of mostly-forest, and have some examples of these right in the yard. Even the stumps of much larger trees logged long ago, support fair-sized younger trees today.
I agree, it’s fascinating!
Or perhaps you wouldn't make it all the way down because you'd get eaten all at once by some larger creature? Or destroyed by pressure?
I thought this may be a colloquial expression of IT infrastructure admins when all their Docker hosts suddenly fail.
> In the past three years whale fall sites have come under scrutiny, and new species have been discovered, including potential whale fall specialists
>It has been suggested that the whaling industry has had an effect on the biological pump through the elimination of many large whales, reducing the amount of whale falls. The effects of this on benthic whale fall community assemblages is not well understood.[24] However, it is suggested that the removal of large whales might have reduced the total biomass of the deep sea by more than 30%.[24] Whales stored massive amounts of carbon that were exported to the deep sea during whale fall events.
>Whaling has thus also reduced the ability of the deep sea to sequester carbon.[24] Carbon can be sequestered for hundreds to thousands of years in the deep sea, supporting benthic communities.[24] It is estimated that, in terms of carbon sequestration, each whale is equivalent to thousands of trees.[25]
I'm not sure if our primary goal in "improving nature" is to help "nature" or simply keep nature sustainable for humans and future humans.
Note that this is a vague impression of a topic I know next to nothing about; I could easily be wrong here.
I think we usually see two distinct failure modes; either a company rots from the inside and loses a significant portion of its peak value before finally succumbing to an acquisition, at which point the single acquirer picks their bones dry. Or a massive company fails in a spectacular fashion, like we might see with some airlines in the next few months, but isn’t it also true that either they will restructure in bankruptcy or a large single competitor will come and sweep them up?
I guess the difference is that there’s nothing in the ocean that can devour a whale in one bite, the only option is for many very smaller creatures to feast on it over a long time period. TFA also mentions a crucial factor is the whale needs to fall in the deep sea, coastal water falls don’t result in the same effect. What would be the analogy for the deep sea effect — to preserve the company over time to allow the smaller entities to “feed” on it?
If there was a way to better emulate the natural effect I think it would be hugely beneficial to market diversity and competition. I think markets continue to evolve in ways that support and encourage monoliths. This long-term trend has just been massively accelerated over the last couple months.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=w...
What happened in October 2019?
If it weren't for the expense and trouble this would cause my loved ones, I would now ask for a burial at sea into the abyss^. So poetic in word and effect.
^abyssal zone
OTOH ... awesome article - thanks for sharing!
But actually learned something very cool!
--
[1] 'I wonder if it [the planet] will be friends with me?', thought the Whale.
It’s covered in the third book! (Life, the Universe, and Everything)
The entire character arc is basically Douglas Adams taking out his frustration with Jaguar drivers in traffic.
It didn't go well. Classic news blurb though.
From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Note that, in general, comments like yours are not appreciated here.
> A Wikipedia link to something obscure, which most readers won't have heard of before, about which there isn't necessarily a good general-purpose article or blog post out there, can be a great HN submission.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
Which was the first thing to come to mind when I saw this post
I think few people really think of what happens when a whale dies over deep ocean. It apparently has huge nonlinear effects. That is pretty cool in its own right, but there are some practical reasons why many HN readers may like this.
Most of us working in areas where there is a complex interplay of technology, competition, big economic actors, small economic actors, evolutionary incentives, multiscale processes, etc. Whale falls map just enough on what we do such that it is a fresh starting point in thinking about the enterprises and industries in which we work, and just imprecisely enough such that it can spark some new thinking about things that we are working on that we might have missed before.
I used to work for a multibillion dollar enterprise that is averse to public embarrassment. Already I am re-thinking of what really happens when a dying megaproject is sent off to quietly die without canning all of the people, some of which are actually talented and creative.
HN is a place I turn to to feed my curiosity, and really appreciate that it’s not just tech/startup content that makes it’s way here.
There was a similar-but-different discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23087284 if anyone wants more.