Four Reasons that Saving the Great Whales Can Help Battle Global Warming
For almost three centuries, men relentlessly hunted the world's great whales to the point that many species are down to about 10% of their pre-whaling numbers and some---like the magnificent blue whale---are now in danger of extinction.
In the Southern Hemisphere alone, whalers harvested nearly 260,000 blue whales between 1900 and 1985 (when most whaling was outlawed) and although 25 years have now passed the recovery has been painfully slow: less than twenty five hundred blue whales are believed to be alive today.
So many sperm whales died in the Southern Oceans (between Australia and Antarctica) as the result of modern industrialized whaling that only about 12,000 remain where once there had been 120,000---a 90% decline in population.
And, that is only one of the Seven Seas.
For every blue whale you see today, your great granddad may have seen 50 or even a 100. For every sperm whale you see while on a whale watching tour, your grandfather or your grandma would most likely have seen a dozen or even more.
But, apart from feeling badly for the poor whales, why should we care?
Well, here are 4 facts about whales you most likely have never been told:
1. Each year, the 12,000 sperm whales in the Southern Ocean defecate 50 tons of iron into the seas, fertilizing plankton that suck up the equivalent of carbon emissions from 40,000 autos.
If the sperm whale population in that ocean alone were permitted to recover to its pre-whaling numbers, their waste products alone would offset the emissions of 400,000 cars every year. With an average lifespan of 60 years or longer (man is their only real threat), that is the equivalent offset of carbon emissions from 24,000,000 automobiles.
And, that is when these animals are alive.
2. As well as producing waste products that offset carbon, the great whales store enormous amounts of carbon in their bodies while alive. When they die, their bodies sink, taking all that carbon away from the atmosphere and into the depths of the oceans. Scientists estimate that if we allowed the great whales to recover to the population levels that existed before being hunted, sinking whale carcasses alone would remove 160,000 tons (320 million pounds) of carbon from the atmosphere---every year.
3. If we have any real hope of fighting global temperature rises, we need all of the help we are able to get and whales have been preserving the planet for more than 130,000,000 years.
4. And, naturally, we do not need to simply take advantage of their bodily wastes. Whale watching is one of the fastest growing, and economically rewarding, parts of the world's tourism industry these days.
About the Author:
Whether you've ever been to the land named by Christopher Columbus or dreamed about finally taking Costa Rica vacations, we've got the scoop.They're the largest toothed whales on the planet, the fearsome white whale of Moby Dick, that fueled the Industrial Revolution a century before oil was found, and they are valuable combatants in the war against planetary warming, check out Sperm Whale facts.