The whale graveyards that remodel the deep sea

A photographer captured this extraordinary website the place whales’ our bodies lie within the shallows. Had they died naturally, their our bodies would normally be scattered throughout the ocean. These photographs inform the story of a deep-sea denied of important sustenance, and whole ecosystems that can by no means come to be.

In jap Greenland, Alex Dawson slipped into the ocean via a gap reduce into the pack ice. He sank into the darkness under and – only a few metres down – he discovered a mass grave of butchered minke whales.

It took an hour of travelling to get to the dive website, by foot and by snowmobile. The air was -20C (-4F), and the group battered by sturdy winds. “We had a lot of gear,” says Dawson, an acclaimed underwater photographer. “We were six scuba divers, with six divers’ gear. There were cameras, there was food and all kinds of supplies for the day – safety equipment, ice drills…” The gear was piled on a sledge and pulled by a snowmobile whereas the group walked on foot. “When you walked, if you didn’t have snowshoes on you stepped through the thin layer of ice, and you got into water almost to your knees – every step,” says Dawson.

“Once we got there it took hours to make the hole,” he continues. Their means into the ocean beneath the ice was a small triangle-shaped gap reduce by hand via a few metre (3ft) of ice. “We tried to clear out as much of the slush from the hole as possible,” he says. Then, Dawson – in his thick drysuit, hood and gloves – was first to enter the water.

The website Dawson finally discovered under the waves was not solely placing, however troubling. In life whales remodel their setting, and in demise too they play an outsized role on their ecosystems. And right here in jap Greenland, bones that may naturally have fallen to the deep ocean ground as an alternative lie trapped within the shallows.