Just as trees store carbon on land, the giant bodies of whales lock up carbon at sea. But a century of whaling has reduced the numbers of many species — including blue, humpback and bowhead whales — by more than 75%.
Andrew Pershing at the University of Maine in Orono and his colleagues estimate that pre-industrial whale populations held almost 9 million tonnes more carbon than do today's whales, equivalent to more than 110,000 hectares of forest. That carbon hasn't just shifted around in the food chain, the researchers say, because whales store more carbon than smaller animals, such as penguins, given the same amount of food. Helping to rebuild whale numbers could provide the world with a blubbery carbon sink.
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Marine biology: Charismatic carbon. Nature 467, 135 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/467135c
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/467135c
