Whale poo, the climate and you
I vaguely remember the plot of an early “Star Trek” movie (“Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,” the Internet machine tells me) that involved saving Earth by saving the whales. The crew of the Enterprise had to travel back in time to fetch a whale for their present (our future) or some lonely space probe would turn earth into a dark, barren, preindustrial hellscape.
Well, we don’t have to fear a rogue space probe (as best I know), and we still have some whales … but that’s the thing, it seems — we used to have more, but now we only have some.
What we do have to fear is global warning, and, according to a new report from the University of Vermont, climate change was accelerated by the near extinction of whales in the 20th century.
Whales, it turns out, are great geoengineers and fantastic carbon sinks too:
Not only do the nutrients in whale poo feed other organisms, from phytoplankton upwards – and thereby absorb the carbon we humans are pumping 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's 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.
According to Greg Gatenby, a whale expert quoted in the Guardian, the 20th century saw the demise of about 300,000 blue whales. “If you average each whale at 100 tons,” said Gatenby, “that makes for the removal from the ocean of approximately 30m tons of biomass. And that's just for one species.”
And here’s another little bit of whale-sized irony: As the Guardian notes, the decline in American whaling in the latter half of the 19th century can be attributed in part to the discovery and proliferation of use of mineral oils (you know, black gold … Texas tea). As the New York Times noted in 2008, “They used to say whale oil was indispensable, too”:
Like oil, particularly in its early days, whaling spawned dazzling fortunes, depending on the brute labor of tens of thousands of men doing dirty, sweaty, dangerous work. Like oil, it began with the prizes closest to home and then found itself exploring every corner of the globe. And like oil, whaling at its peak seemed impregnable, its product so far superior to its trifling rivals, like smelly lard oil or volatile camphene, that whaling interests mocked their competitors.
….
But, in fact, whaling was already just about done, said Eric Jay Dolin, who wrote some of the text for the exhibit and is the author of “Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America.” Whales near North America were becoming scarce, and the birth of the American petroleum industry in 1859 in Titusville, Pa., allowed kerosene to supplant whale oil before the electric light replaced both of them and oil found other uses.
Japan’s efforts notwithstanding, whale populations are rebounding slowly since the global whaling ban took hold in the 1980s. Fast enough to absorb all the excess carbon produced by the modern Leviathan birthed at Titusville? Likely not. But as whales come back a bit, maybe they can serve as a reminder that progress is not about exploiting a resource till it is almost gone, especially when you don’t have 23rd century technology to give you a do-over.
And they can keep up the good digestive work, too.
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