International Journal of Molecular Ecology and Conservation, 2025, Vol.15, No.4, 163-174 http://ecoevopublisher.com/index.php/ijmec 1 65 Figure 1 The first discovery of the whale fall of Stenella longirostris on the Zhongnan seamount in the South China Sea in March 2020 (Adopted from Yin et al., 2023) Image caption: Some megafauna observed at the dolphin fall during April–June 2020: (B) Munidopsis sp., (C) caridean shrimp, (D) sea urchin, (E) lithodid crab, (F) snailfish, (G) grenadier, (H) cusk-eel, and (I) Halosauridae sp. (Adopted from Yin et al., 2023) 3 The Stage Division of Ecological Succession in Whale Fall 3.1 Mobile scavenger stage This is the initial stage after the formation of a whale fall, lasting from several months to several years (Bolstad et al., 2023; Xie et al., 2023). When the huge whale carcasses sink to the bottom of the sea, they first attract large deep-sea scavengers such as sleeping sharks, rays, deep-sea fish and large scavengers (Zhou et al., 2020). For instance, in a simulated "Niu Luo" experiment in the South China Sea, eight Pacific sleeper sharks were observed to come in turn to tear up corpses (Tian et al., 2024). During this process, a large amount of organic debris and nutrients seep into the adjacent seabed, forming a eutrophic sedimentary environment. This provides the basic conditions for the subsequent stages of settled organisms. The main ecological function of the meat accumulation stage lies in rapidly transferring most of the organic matter of the whale body to the deep-sea food web: scavengers convert whale meat into their own energy
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