One Species, One Ocean
Nature · · 5 min read · By No Design Editorial
Whales are not only spectacle. They move nutrients on a scale that changes the chemistry of an entire ocean, just by living in it.
A humpback throwing forty tonnes clear of the water is a spectacle. The argument here is not about spectacle. It is about leverage, and how much a single kind of animal can move simply by going about its life.
Whales feed at depth and return to the surface to breathe and release waste. That vertical movement carries nutrients, particularly iron and nitrogen, from deep water up into the sunlit layer where phytoplankton live and where those nutrients are otherwise scarce. Their movement across latitudes carries nutrients horizontally as well, from rich feeding grounds to poorer breeding grounds.
Phytoplankton are the base of the ocean's food web and a substantial contributor to the oxygen in the atmosphere. Fertilise them and you are not adjusting one population; you are adjusting the productivity of the sea.
Whale falls extend the same logic. A carcass sinking to the deep floor delivers, in one event, an amount of carbon that would otherwise take a very long time to arrive, and it supports specialised communities that live on almost nothing else.
The point is the ratio. A comparatively small number of very large animals, doing nothing more deliberate than eating, surfacing and dying, keeps the chemistry of an ocean turning over. That is a great deal of consequence resting on one group of creatures.
'Do you not see that Allah has subjected to you whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth?' (Quran 31:20)
From Chapter 8: Signs in the Sea.
Tags: Whales, Ocean, Nutrients, Quran