Scientists Call Whales the ‘Engineers’ of the Ocean Ecosystem

The whaling industry has reduced baleen and sperm whale populations by an estimated 66 to 90 percent. In the past, scientists thought cetaceans such as these were too rare to significantly affect the ocean ecosystem. But in a recent paper in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, conservation biologist Joe Roman says that whales are critical to the stability of their environment because of a mechanism called the “whale pump,” or fecal plumes.