What Happens to a Dead Body in the Ocean?-28,oct,2014 . . Lots of human bodies end up in the sea, whether due to accidents, suicides or from being intentionally dumped there, but nobody really knows what happens to them, said Gail Anderson, a forensic entomologist at Simon Fraser University in Canada who led the unusual study. Pigs are the best models for humans, Anderson told Live Science. Theyre roughly the right size for a human body; they have the same kind of gut bacteria, and theyre relatively hairless, she said. The researchers monitored what happened to the pig bodies using the live VENUS cameras, which they could control from anywhere with an Internet connection, and sensors that could measure oxygen levels, temperature, pressure, salinity and other factors. At the end of the study, the scientists collected the bones for further examination. It didnt take long for scavengers to find the pigs. Shrimp, Dungeness crabs and squat lobsters all arrived and started munching on the bodies; a shark even came to feed on one of the pig corpses.Scavengers ate the first two bodies down to the bones within a month, but they took months to pick the third one clean. The third body likely took so much longer due to the levels of oxygen in the water, the researchers found. The Saanich Inlet is a low-oxygen environment, and has no oxygen during some times of the year, Anderson said. When the researchers dropped the first two pigs into the water, the oxygen levels were about the same, but when scientists dropped the third body in, the levels were lower. The big scavengers (Dungeness crab and shrimp) need more oxygen to smaller creatures like the squat lobsters. But the smaller animals mouths arent strong enough to break the skin of the pigs. So as long as the carcass entered the water when oxygen conditions were tolerable, the larger animals would feed, opening the bodies up for smaller critters and the squat lobsters, Anderson said. But when oxygen was low, the larger animals didnt come, and the smaller animals couldnt feed. Now we have a very good idea of how bodies break down underwater, Anderson said. This kind of research helps solve mysteries such as the floating feet found wearing running shoes that have washed up along the West Coast in recent years. In fact, its quite normal for ocean scavengers to gnaw off feet, and the running shoes simply make the body parts float, Anderson said. Knowing how bodies degrade in the ocean can give rescue divers a sense of what to look for, as well as manage the expectations of family members of those lost at sea, Anderson said. livescience
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 11:16:05 +0000