food fall

noun

An event in which organic matter in the ocean sinks to the seafloor.

Meanings

nounfood fall (plural food falls)

plural food falls · alternative food-fall · alternative foodfall

  1. marine biologyAn event in which organic matter in the ocean sinks to the seafloor.
    2 more examples

    Klages, Michael; Muyakshin, Sergey; Soltwedel, Thomas; Arntz, Wolf (28 January 2002), “Mechanoreception, a possible mechanism for food fall detection in deep-sea scavengers”, in Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers, volume 49, number 1, →Bibcode, →DOI, pages 143–155: “The problem for any scavenger inhabiting the seafloor is the unpredictability both in space and time of food fall events.”

    Klages, Michael; Vopel, Kay; Bluhm, Hartmut; brey, Thomas; Soltwedel, Thomas; Arntz, Wolf E. (28 April 2001), “Deep-sea food falls: first observation of a natural event in the Arctic Ocean”, in Polar Biology, volume 24, →DOI, pages 292–295: “We report and discuss the first observation of the processing of a natural food fall of smaller size in the deep sea.”

Cite this entry
APA

food fall. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/food%20fall

MLA

“food fall.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/food%20fall. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “food fall,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/food%20fall.

Source: food fall on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.