This planet biosphere forms one huge ecosystem, shrouded in mystery in many ways. Whatever we breathe, drink, or eat is a product shaped of components that are recycled from previous life forms, of either animal or plant origin. Can such a thought be called immoral? Yes, certainly. More important, though - it’s the truth.

With exploding human populations an increasing percentage of world’s total biomass is expressed by human bodies. It took mankind several hundreds of thousands of years to reach the population mark of 1 billion (around 1700 a.d.). When I was born in 1956 the planet’s human population count stood at 2.5 billion. Now, in 2005, there are more than six billion people roaming the planet, with no end in sight. As the human world population grows, other expressions of our planet’s biomass shrink or disappear. But is this only a one-way road? No, it’s not. Think about the recent tsunami.

An estimated 120000 human bodies were washed into the ocean, when the Tsunami waves roared back to the sea. Assuming an average body weight of 120 pounds, it means that some 7200 metric tons of human biomass were recycled back to the marine realm. The oceans are well equipped for recycling any form of protein. Arthropods, crustaceans, echinoids scavenge the ocean floors, while large predators such as sharks roam the water column along the continental shelf margins.

Large decaying bodies, such as corpses of whales, smaller marine mammals or humans are often taken care by hagfish. These blind and primitive eel-like creatures are highly efficient scavengers. Hagfishes are scale-less, soft-skinned creatures with paired thick barbels on the end of the snout. Their skeletons are cartilaginous, and their mouths are round or slit- like, sucking openings provided with horny teeth. Hagfishes are found in cold seawater, to depths of about 1,300 m (4,260 feet). They live on soft bottoms, in burrows, and habitually lie buried except for the tip of the head. Their diet includes mainly marine invertebrates and dead or crippled fishes. Hagfishes bore their way into the bodies and eat them from inside. Because hagfishes secrete extraordinary amounts of slime when handled, they are sometimes known as slime eels.

As human biomass ‘reincarnates’ as marine eel etc populations, it becomes part of the ocean. There is no way of controlling the spread of biomass within the ocean’s food chain.

Where will it end up? With an ever-increasing human appetite for seafood and fish, it may be on your dinner plate, down in China town.

© 2005 by Franz L Kessler

Ref. Encyclopedia Britannica 2003.