Whale remains have accumulated in this Indian Ocean site for 5 million years
9:26 AM CDT on June 11, 2026
When whales die and sink to the ocean floor, their carcasses become buffets for a whole web of ocean organisms. To date, such “whale falls” have been documented as deep as about 4,000 meters, with the deepest known found by a manned submersible in the southwest Atlantic Ocean at a depth of about 13,200 feet. Yesterday, though, a new study announced the discovery of a vast area of whale falls on even deeper seafloor in the southeastern Indian Ocean.
A team of researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with the University of Pisa in Italy and Earth Sciences New Zealand, conducted 32 dives in a human-occupied vehicle in the Diamantina Zone, a system of seafloor ridges and trenches that ranges from 2,021 to almost 23,000 feet in depth. The dives occurred over a period of about five weeks, mapping remains of both baleen and beaked whales, including several now-extinct genera.
Read more: “The Unseen Deep-Sea Legacy of Whaling”
