Whale Fall Cafe

When a whale carcass lands on the deep ocean floor, a café opens for business, and the diners don't stop rooting their way through the menu until the cupboards are bare. Hagfish, zombie worms, sleeper sharks—this group of patrons is stranger than the denizens of the Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars.

A fish in a lab coat, piloting a deep-sea submersible, is our guide to the weirdly fascinating goings-on miles beneath the ocean surface.   The backmatter includes rare whale-fall photos from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

Dr. Robert Vrijenhoek of MBARI and Dr. Craig Smith, a deep-ocean ecologist at the University of Hawaii, have helped Jacquie Sewell to ensure scientific accuracy.