When the wind and waves subsided slightly, the speedboat gently approached the blue whale.

The sea water was very clear, and at this time, Chen Song lay on the bow of the boat and looked down, and finally saw this behemoth.

Looking down from his vantage point, he couldn't see the whole picture of the blue whale at all, only a part of it.

He saw a fin of fish, pectoral fins like the size of a train car.

Seeing him staring blankly at the huge fin, Angelina said, "Isn't it shocking?"

Chen Song swallowed his saliva and said, "It's so shocking, its fins are so big, how big can that head be?"

Angelina said: "It's bigger than a villa. ”

Chen Song exclaimed, if such a big fish head fell into Luo Bingxin's hands, how many meals of pickled pepper fish head could be made? It is estimated that it will be enough for the two of them to eat for a lifetime.

Thinking of this, he suddenly wondered, how could he suddenly think of Luo Bingxin, a fat girl, when he stayed with Angelina?

Soon he found a reason: there is a craft that is beneficial, he thought of making pickled pepper fish head, and to make a dish must need a cook, Luo Bingxin is a very powerful little cook.

Chen Song stared at the fin, and then found a huge wound on the fin, revealing the flesh of the fish that had been soaked in the sea water and turned a miserable white.

He pointed to the wound and asked, "You said that you were guarding this whale to prevent some lawbreakers from cutting the whale meat, so you look at this wound, is this the work of lawbreakers?"

Angelina leaned down beside him and looked down, and said, "No, I think it must be the masterpiece of a group of tiger sharks that arrived two days ago, and they ate some whale meat." ”

Then she explained to Chen Song that after the blue whale dies, it will form the largest whale fall in the ocean, and this is a process, which is divided into multiple stages, and now it is the first stage, which is called mobile scavengers.

The whale carcass floats on the surface of the sea and then gradually sinks to the bottom of the sea, where many creatures come to prey on it, such as hagfish, sharks, and some carnivorous crustaceans.

They will feed on the soft tissues of the whale carcass, a process that lasts from six months to two years, and then enter the opportunist stage, in which the remaining whale carcass will feed many invertebrates, polychaetes and some crustaceans, and they will directly make the whale carcass their home, eating, drinking, lazing and lodging here......

Listening to Angelina's introduction, Chen Song said: "It reminds me of a dialogue in a cartoon that I saw in my childhood, but I always remember it later. ”

Angelina asked, "What is it?"

"In Disney's 'The Lion King,' young Simba asks his lion father, is it bad for us to eat antelope? The old lion king says it's a kind of reincarnation, we eat antelope, and the antelope eats grass, and when we die, it becomes grass. Chen Song said with a sigh.

Angelina nodded and said, "I understand what you mean, that's it, a whale fall like a blue whale can support a circulatory system dominated by decomposers for a hundred years." Yesterday I heard Professor Petrov of the expedition team say a very poetic sentence, which is the last tenderness left by the gentle blue whale to the sea home. ”

Compared to other large mammals and large fish such as sharks, the blue whale has a very gentle temperament.

This super-large mammal is a miracle of life, and Chen Song looked down on its vague figure and marveled again and again.

Angelina stopped the speedboat, leaned on the rudder with her arms crossed, and said, "If you like blue whales, then you made the right choice to come to Iceland." ”

She told Chen that there are only two blue whale populations living in the North Atlantic, the first in Greenland, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and the Bay of St. Lawrence, with an estimated population of about 500.

The second one has to do with Iceland, which appears in the Azores in spring and in July and August, and is a large population of nearly 1,000 individuals.

In fact, Chen Song is not particularly enthusiastic about whale watching, and the reason why he exclaimed at the whale landing was because he found that he was not particularly excited about Angelina, and there was nothing he wanted to talk about.

In other words, if he didn't pretend to be interested in the whale in a daze, the atmosphere on the dinghy would be awkward, and he couldn't find anything to talk about.

The research boat helped him, a kayak fell from the big boat, and three scientific researchers rowed over.

"Good morning, Officer Anna, it's your turn to be on duty again today?" the youngest middle-aged man greeted him in a friendly manner.

Angelina smiled, "Yes, I also brought a friend who is very interested in whale falls, Professor Mazanis, if you are not very busy with work, can you tell my friend about whale falls? I know you are an expert in this area." ”

As you can tell from his surname, Mazanis is a foreigner or a newcomer like Chen Song, who estimates that he is from Greece, and since the Greek economic crisis, many high-level intellectuals from their country have emigrated to Europe.

Mazanis welcomed, and they rowed to the side of the speedboat and invited Chen Song and the others to board.

Chen Song cautiously asked, "Dear professor, can this raft seat five people?"

Mazanis smiled happily: "Actually, there are some problems, but it doesn't matter, my two colleagues can stay on your speedboat for the time being, this time we are here to deploy something, very simple work, you two can help me, and we will complete this work together." ”

Another middle-aged man added, "Officer Anna can help alone, and if you don't feel interested, you can stay on the speedboat with us." ”

Chen Song immediately understood that this Professor Mazanis was probably not here to work, but to attack Angelina.

So he said, "I must be interested in this work." ”

The four of them changed boats, and Professor Mazanis rowed alone, driving the small kayak close to the whale's exposed body.

As he got closer, Chen Song saw that there were many tentacles-like things growing on the waterline of the exposed part of the blue whale and the underwater part, densely packed.

Then he asked curiously, "What part of the whale is this, and why do you have so many tentacles?"

"It's not tentacles, it's hagfish, they parasitize the blue whale and are the main players in the moving scavenger stage of the whale fall," Mazanis said. ”

He rowed the dinghy closer, and Angelina said helplessly: "We don't need to observe so closely, right?"

Mazanis said: "No, it's not an observation, we're going to dig them up and bring them back, it's a very delicious food, it's usually only found in large benthic fish, and we're lucky to be able to bump into them today." ”

Angelina shook her head: "Oh, sorry, I don't think I'm interested in this delicacy. ”

As soon as he heard her say this, Mazanis immediately said: "Then let's forget it and work directly." ”