Although the use of deep-sea imagery considerably increased during the last decades, reports on nekton falls to the deep seafloor are very scarce. Whereas there are a few reports describing the finding of whale carcasses in the deep north-eastern and south-eastern Pacific, descriptions of invertebrate or vertebrate food-falls at centimetre to metre scale are extremely rare. After 4 years of extensive work at a deep-sea long-term station in northern polar regions (AWI-"Hausgarten"), including large-scale visual observations with various camera systems covering some 10 000 m2 of seafloor at water depths between 1250 and 5600 m, this paper describes the first observation of a fish carcass at about 1280 m water depth, west off Svålbard. The fish skeleton had a total length of 36 cm and an approximated biomass of 0.5 kg wet weight. On the basis of in situ experiments, we estimated a very short residence time of this particular carcass of about 7 h at the bottom. The fast response of the motile deep-sea scavenger community to such events and the rapid utilisation of this kind of organic carbon supply might partly explain the extreme rarity of such an observation.

Cable-operated drifting camera frame Ocean Floor Observation system (OFOS). System details: Still camera 35 mm (Benthos), Kodak Ectachrome 100 Asa colour slide film, B/w video camera (DeepSea Power & Light), two flashes (600W/s), Distance of laser points: 0.5 mDeployment details: Drift velocity: approx. 0.5 knots, Distance to seafloor: approx. 1.5 m

Supplement to: Soltwedel, Thomas; von Juterzenka, Karen; Premke, Karin; Klages, Michael (2003): What a lucky shot ! Photographic evidence for a medium-sized natural food-fall at the deep seafloor (Heureuse surprise! Évidence photographique de la présence d'un cadavre d'animal nectonique de taille moyenne sur le plancher océanique). Oceanologica Acta, 26(5-6), 623-628