How Whales Die — and the Remarkable Life Their Bodies Support Afterward
Key Takeaway on How Whales Die:
- Some whales die naturally of old age after surprisingly long lives. Certain whales can live to be 80 years old, while others can live to about 200 years old.
- After a whale dies, its carcass becomes a vital food source for marine ecosystems. Some creatures can even feed off the fat stored in whale bones.
- A whale carcass can help feed marine life for almost 100 years.
We often discuss the imminent risks that whales face from human activities, whether it’s entanglement in discarded fishing nets, whaling, vessel strikes, or noise pollution that disrupts their echolocation and causes them to beach themselves.
But not all whales have tragic ends. Some will die of natural causes. And some will live to a ripe old age and then die a relatively peaceful death, often with family circling them and trying to protect them to the very end.
Do Whales Die of Old Age?
It is true that some whales can and do die of old age, and depending on their lifespans, that can be a very long life. Bowhead whales, for example, can live for up to 200 years, according to the Group for Research and Education on Marine Mammals (GREMM). Blue whales can live 80 to 90 years, sperm whales 60 to 80 years, killer whales 50 to 80 years, and beluga whales 40 to 80 years, to name just a few.
As whales age, they may lose their ability to find food as effectively as they once did, which can leave them exhausted and even cause them to starve to death. This means they don’t have enough energy to surface for air. And while whales can, in some cases, spend over an hour underwater — around 90 minutes for sperm whales — they eventually have to surface for air. Once they’re exhausted, they may become weak and unresponsive and, at some point, take their last breath, dive down and never come back up for air again.
This is what happened to a killer whale named I76 when he died in 2025, according to reports from the Vancouver Sun. He was surrounded by his family and endlessly pestered by a group of dolphins that sensed he wasn’t well, leaving him ragged from their pestering until he was out of energy. He dove down one more time and never surfaced again.
Read More: 9-Million-Year-Old Ancient Whale Graveyard May Trace Back to Explosive Volcanoes
Do Whales Drown?
It isn’t exactly accurate to say that whales drown, Anaïs Remili, a postdoctoral researcher at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and founder of Whale Scientists, told Discover.
Their blowhole can’t open underwater because of a natural reflex, so they actually die of asphyxiation or a lack of oxygen.
Once a whale dies at sea, it usually floats for a bit and becomes food for animals that remain at the surface because of its ample blubber. This becomes food for marine predators like sharks and killer whales.
“Those at the surface can get a free lunch out of it,” Remili told Discover.
For those whales that wash up on the shore after a boat strike or become beached, they can also become an important food source for those animals at the shore, like polar bears, which can be sustained this way for some time due to the whale’s thick layer of blubber providing a nutritionally dense and easy meal for the Arctic predator, according to the University of Washington.
Whales Are Ecosystem Engineers
In life, whales eat plankton, which passes through their digestive system and becomes feces rich in nitrogen, providing high-quality soil for other plankton to grow. Once they die, they again feed their ecosystem with energy-rich nutrients.
A “whale fall” occurs when a deceased whale sinks through the water column to the ocean floor, becoming a food source for the entire ecosystem.
“Whales are ecosystem engineers because they build this new ecosystem that’s nutritionally dense at the bottom of the sea where the ocean floor is usually quite bare,” Remili told Discover.
It’s a long process that can last an entire century depending on the whale’s size. The process includes an interesting “succession” of animals helping to decompose the carcass, said Remili. Large fish, sharks, and crabs first consume large chunks of blubber, organs, and muscle. Then smaller crustaceans and fish pick up the leftover pieces once the larger predators have taken their share.
Afterward, even tinier creatures will survive on the fat found inside the whale’s bones. Within the bone is a honeycomb-like structure that’s used in whales for additional fat storage, according to the South Australian Museum. Around the vertebrae, for example, fatty cushioning in the bone helps the whale absorb shock while it’s alive and then sustains tiny crustaceans and, later, bacteria for up to a century after the whale’s death. It takes a long time to break down all the fat in a whale, and these fat stores feed another entire ecosystem long after the whale has made its exit.
“It’s an incredible tale of energy recycling, and it shows that these huge whales are the engineers of their ecosystems while they’re alive and also after they die,” Remili told Discover.
Read More: Gray Whales Keep Turning Up in Rivers — What Is Driving This Strange Behavior?
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