from Hacker News

Whales Keep Carbon out of the Atmosphere (2017)

by yurisagalov on 10/15/19, 7:43 AM with 41 comments

• by samvher on 10/16/19, 7:25 AM

  Scientists have made progress in terms of pinpointing exactly how much carbon whales keep out of the atmosphere; one study suggests that every year, sperm whales help sequester as much carbon as 694 acres of U.S. forests do. Another found that in Hawaii, the swimming motion of 80 whales can absorb the equivalent carbon of 208 acres of U.S. forests.

  The title of this article made me expect more. Unless they mean the 694 acres is the contribution per whale (the article doesn't provide references).

• by onion2k on 10/16/19, 5:52 AM

  The article mentions eco-tourism and whale watching. I wonder if the carbon footprint of someone flying to an island, staying there for a week, and taking boat trips out to whale watch actually results in whales being a net negative on the environment. If we let them die out so that tourism stopped it could be a positive for the planet.

  (I'm not suggesting we should actually do this though. Whales are pretty amazing.)

• by 0-_-0 on 10/16/19, 8:01 AM

  According to the article:

  "Whales facilitate carbon absorption in two ways. On the one hand, their movements — especially when diving — tend to push nutrients from the bottom of the ocean to the surface, where they feed the phytoplankton and other marine flora that suck in carbon, as well as fish and other smaller animals."

  I wonder if it would be possible to artificially create upwards currents in the ocean to push up nutrients, you could do the job of a million whales. Might be cheaper than planting forests...

• by ivanhoe on 10/16/19, 9:39 AM

  It's actually phytoplankton that captures the CO2, so what about other kinds of whales that actually feed on plankton and don't dive as deep as sperm whales?

• by spodek on 10/16/19, 3:30 PM

  Read The Once and Future World https://www.amazon.com/Once-Future-World-Nature-Could/dp/030... to learn how much more whales there used to be and their effect on making the environment more stable and able to sustain life.

  It's stunning and, I hope, behavior-changing.

  I did two video essays on the book, though I didn't cover the parts on whales

  - http://joshuaspodek.com/your-daily-environment-009-the-once-...

  - http://joshuaspodek.com/your-daily-environment-010-the-once-...

• by kian on 10/16/19, 3:28 PM

  Curious here - with everything going on with ocean acidification, would we really rather sequester carbon dioxide in the oceans, where it will contribute to the destruction of corals, or leave it in the atmosphere?