Amazing fact: A whale's poop can offset Earth's carbon footprint

One man’s waste can be another’s treasure, quite literally while it comes to whales. Actually, whale poop is a good fertiliser for the ocean’s phytoplankton which capture half of all carbon dioxide produced on earth. That’s roughly four times the job done by Amazon rainforests.  

What are phytoplankton? 
These are microscopic marine algae in the ocean. They are very similar to terrestrial plants in that they contain chlorophyll and require sunlight in order to live and grow. They therefore float in the upper part of the ocean, where sunlight penetrates the water.  

But why are they important? Well, let’s say, if they were not there, you would not die of the carbon in the atmosphere. That is because these phytoplankton absorb as much as 50% of Earth’s total carbon. So, when we say that oceans are the lungs of the planet, these phytoplankton are to thank for it. They capture at least 37 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year – at least four times what the Amazon rainforest does and they generate about 50 percent of all oxygen produced.  

So how does whale poop come into the picture? 
Whales feed in the deep ocean, then return to the surface every 60 minutes or so to breathe, digest and poop! Their floater-style faeces is apparently rich in many nutrients such as iron, nitrogen, and phosphorus and that’s exactly what phytoplankton need to grow. That’s not all. The nutrients in whale poop are also transported across the ocean as whales migrate between high-latitude and low-latitude feeding grounds, and the churning effect of their massive bodies swimming through the ocean stirs up other nutrients as well that the phytoplankton thankfully love.  

In simple terms, you can say that animal poop of any kind makes for great organic fertiliser on land, whale poop fertilises the oceans in similar way. When phytoplankton are healthy, they naturally absorb significant quantities of carbon dioxide for the oceans' surface waters. The more the phytoplankton, the more food for whales and fish and the better the environment for all living beings. 

How do whales help the environment?  
Now, we don’t need to tell you that whales, particularly baleen and sperm whales, are among the largest creatures on Earth. Imagine their huge bodies acting as huge stores of carbon in the air. Yes, these pristine animals store carbon in their bodies and therefore act like organic carbon pumps in the ocean. When they die, they sink to the ocean floor taking all the carbon stored in their enormous bodies from surface waters to the deep sea for centuries or more. Each adult whale sequesters around 33 tonnes of carbon on an average (with an average lifespan of 150 years). A team of researchers calculated that a tree absorbs about 22 kg of carbon per year. So, by that logic, a whale is equivalent to about 1500 trees. The estimated value of just one whale has actually been arrived at a whopping $2 million!  

Decreasing whale population 
Commercial whaling has been around for a long time now. Humans have killed whales for meat, oil and whalebone.  Commercial whaling is being done since 1000 AD. Millions of whales have been killed since then and according to estimates whale population may have declined anywhere between 66% and 90%. Now, when the whale carcass is prevented from sinking to the seabed and instead, the whale is killed and processed – the carbon it has in its body is released into the atmosphere.  

Additionally, decreasing population of whales in the oceans affects the entire ecosystem. For example, orcas that take whales as their food turn to smaller marine mammals like sea otters. They subsequently decline in numbers, leading to the spread of sea urchins, which munch away the algae and plants with a knock-on effect on marine carbon sequestration (carbon absorption).