This was an informative article (great links for forensic freaks like me); however, it did not answer it's own title question.
doh!
Laura/whereabouts
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Jun 10, 2009 09:50 PM in Health | 3 comments | Post a comment

How long do dead bodies remain intact in the ocean?

By Brendan
Borrell in 60-Second
Science Blog

Editor's note: Some readers may be disturbed by the content of this
article, which refers to Air France Flight 447 and contains descriptions of
human remains.
On Tuesday, Brazilian authorities recovered 16 bodies from the Air France
crash in the Atlantic Ocean, bringing the total to 24.

The Airbus 330 jet
took off from Rio de Janeiro on its way to Paris on May 31 when it disappeared
during intense thunderstorms. Investigators are currently considering the
possibility that the plane's airspeed sensors were iced over. Meanwhile the
Brazilian navy is conducting an all-out search
for the bodies.

Finding survivors lost
at sea is a race against time because of the possibility of starvation or hypothermia.
But none of the 228 people on board Flight 447 were expected to have survived
the plane's impact.

So how long can a body remain intact at sea, to be
recovered?

The Australian Museum has an informative Web site, deathonline.net,
on how human remains change after death. On land, bacteria and other microbes in
the body will rapidly multiply and break down the soft tissue. Shortly after
death, flies and other insects consume the soft tissue. Vultures, dogs or other
large mammals may also take pieces of the decomposing flesh, sometimes reducing
the corpse into a skeleton in under two weeks.

On the open ocean,
however, flies and other insects are largely absent. And if the body is floating
in water less than 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius) the tissues turn
into a soapy fatty acid known as "grave
wax" that halts bacterial growth. The skin, however, will still blister and
turn greenish black. Finally, crabs and small fish may feed on the soft parts of
the face like the eyes and lips, according to the book Forensic
Taphonomy: The Postmortem Fate of Human Remains, by William D. Haglund
and Marcella H. Sorg.

Then there are sharks, also an important scavenger.
"Sharks, like any predator, are opportunistic feeders, and they'll take
advantage of a resource that's given to them," says George
Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida
Museum of Natural History in Gainesville and the curator of the International Shark
Attack File.

He says that low-frequency noises caused by a ship
sinking or a plane crashing travel great distances underwater and can attract
the animals. However, he says, "The idea that the…[seas]…are carpeted with
sharks…is a misconception."
Image of waves breaking on a beach courtesy Mr.Thomas via
Flickr