Answer:
Some of the things that worms eat include dead plants, live plants, dead animals, animal poop, and other microscopic animals. After they eat, they grind up and digest their food and pass the rest as waste, called castings, which go back into the soil and help plants grow and stay healthy.
Whale skeletons support so much life because they contain an enormous amount of oil. Before this happens, they must release enough eggs or larvae so that some tiny proportion will be transported by the ocean currents and survive until they can find and colonize another whale carcass.