The first success of the environmental movements of the 1960s was to save the whale. Now, with deep irony, whales may be about to save us with their poo. A new scientific report from the University of Vermont, which has gathered several decades of research, shows that the great whales, which nearly became extinct in the 20th century and are now recovering in number due to the 1983 ban on whaling, might be the enablers of massive carbon sinks via their feces.
Not only do the nutrients in whale poo feed other organisms, from phytoplankton upward — and thereby absorb the carbon people pump into the atmosphere — even in death the sinking bodies of these massive animals create new resources on the sea bed, where entire species exist solely to graze on rotting whale.
There is an additional and direct benefit for humans, too.
Contrary to the suspicions of fishermen that whales take their catch, cetacean recovery could “lead to higher rates of productivity in locations where whales aggregate to feed and give birth.”
Their fertilizing feces here, too, would encourage phytoplankton, which in turn would encourage healthier fisheries.
The new report only underlines what has been suspected for some time: that cetaceans, both living and dead, are ecosystems in their own right. However, it also raises a hitherto unexplored prospect, that climate change might have been accelerated by the terrible whale culls of the 20th century, which removed hundreds of thousands of these ultimate facilitators of carbon dioxide absorption.
Greg Gatenby, an acclaimed Canadian writer on whales, said in response: “About 300,000 blue whales were taken in the 20th century. If you average each whale at 100 tons, that makes for the removal from the ocean of approximately 30 million tons of biomass. And that’s just for one species.”
There is another irony here, too. US whaling declined in part because of the discovery of mineral oil wells in the second half of the 19th century. One unsustainable resource — the whale oil which lit and lubricated the industrial revolution — was replaced by another. By killing so many whales, then turning to carbon-emitting mineral oil, people created a double-whammy for climate change.
The 10 scientists who jointly contributed to the new paper spoke of the benefits of “an ocean repopulated by the great whales.”
Working on a whalewatching boat off Cape Cod last month, an astonishing number of fin whales, humpbacks and minkes feeding on vast schools of sand eels could be seen. Dozens of whales at a time, co-operatively hoovering up the bait, were producing plentiful clouds of poo in the process.
Observers in the Azores have reported similarly remarkable concentrations of cetaceans this summer. And with a 10 percent increase in humpback calves returning to Australian waters each year, and blue whales being seen in the Irish Sea, a burgeoning global population of cetaceans might not just be good for the whalewatching industry, they might play a significant role in the planet’s rearguard action against climate change.
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