For a person who has lived on a boat for six years spending a lot of time scuba and snorkeling in the ocean. There is a question I have, see schools of fish ranging from a few thousand to millions swimming for days and they never stop. Where dose the food come from that supports that large number of fish. It always amazes me when I see it. There is a live stream under water video at Deerfield Beach that shows the dish.I sometimes use this video as a screen saver. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAv4VCC41oU
Once those fish die, they become food for other fish and organisms which become food for the descendants of that fish and of other fish, and of plants. I vaguely recall a time-lapse video of a whale carcass on the bottom of the ocean. All those little critters getting their fill on an infinitesimally small piece of that creature, while that creature's relatives (and others) likely consumed untold billions of those little critters during their life. The symbiosis and natural balance of everything is fascinating, in sea and on land. Then there's a catastrophic event and it all gets reset (Darwin's Punctuated Equilibrium.)
If these fish are swimming 24 hours a day where does the food come from to allow it. I know it happens because it is obvious.
Just for grins I went to the fish guide posted on the video's page. One of the fish is a tomtate grunt. So I looked the fish up on WHATSTHATFISH and found this regarding their dietary habits. Plankton populations (this includes algae) are sustained by solar energy, but also require that a level of nutrients (nitrate, phosphate, silicate) be available in the waters.
When I was the Exec Chef at a major marina near the Watts Bar Dam, we had a crew of divers come in for lunch for a couple days. Their job on the dam was to do a yearly inspection and some of the reports and pictures about the marine life was truly amazing and may I write, scary for most certainly, I would not want their job. I guess the job was dangerous enough as it was but they had to have an extra special crew who weren’t afraid to be around abnormally large marine creatures. A spokesperson for the diving crew told me (and showed me a couple of pictures) that the fish were so enormous because all they would do is swim in one place against the current on the back of the dam with their mouths wide open. In essence, they were being force fed algae, smaller fish and whatever else flowed through the water and simply grew into some humongous, almost monster like fish. At one time, I did a lot of fishing on the “legal” side of the dam and caught some fair sized large mouth bass, striped bass, gar etc but when I saw a picture of a large mouth bass from the other side of the dam that had to weight in at an easy 100 pounds, I was absolutely flabbergasted.
@John Brunner Yes John I know that they are getting food and where it is supposed to come from. That could explain the first thousand fish getting food but what about the million after them. The first should have filtered out all the food. I said I was amazed not ignorant
When I was cruising I spent probably two hours a day in the water hunting and just exploring. I have been in the middle of some of those schools in a way it is eerie because you can see nothing and you do not know if a shark wants dinner or a large barracuda is lurking a few feet away. Probably some of my best memories is exploring the underwater.
Every living creature's remains are recycled back through a chain of other creatures starting with the lowest except man. We usually lock them up in a box and bury them waiting for.....?
I saw a show on the various burial rituals in the world, and it included a place in the woods of North Carolina where people are buried without a box, without being embalmed, and without a marker. It was in the middle of nowhere, not a cemetery. Your spot has its GPS coordinates registered. You're still worm food, but I guess protecting the remains from scavenger-abuse has always been the goal, not just for the deceased but also for shielding survivors from the visual.
I have been thinking of cremation. We are about 98% water, so if the ashes left are tossed outdoors somewhere we have returned to the earth to be recycled.
Me, too. The open casket thing is not for me, nor are those costs. I've got 3 relatives (father, mother, brother) who were cremated, but their ashes were then buried in the urn. I have a small historic church I'm affiliated with where I would like my ashes scattered (got a Confederate AND a Union soldier buried there), but the first strong breeze is gonna "gang aft aglay" those plans. I gotta remark that you know you're in a 1st World Culture where your funeral is referred to as "Your Final Expenses." I guess this is still on-topic, since we're part of the food chain Martin was alluding to...or not. I just read that our ashes contain many nutrients, but our salt content and PH level are both too high to use to amend soil or to scatter on grounds you want to keep healthy. But you can buy a "Cremains Dilution" product to make our ashes plant-safe. Our final final expense.