Dead Squid Moms Are a Gift to the Ocean Floor

Animals living on the ocean floor, where it's too dark for anything to grow, have to wait for food to fall on them. Mostly this means they eat "marine snow," a steady drift of tiny life forms and detritus from the ocean's surface. But robotic expeditions off the coast of Mexico have revealed what might be another major dining option on the ocean floor: dead squid moms.The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) sent one of its remotely operated vehicles to explore de