Throughout history whales were killed for their blubber to help those who needed to survive, overtime this lead to more and more killings to advance economic growth for some countries who were greedy. Specific species of whale, for example humpbacks, were killed almost to extinction because of this, although the population has grown since then, it is said that it may not ever return to the same. It was not as understood in the past as it is now on how important whales really are to marine ecosystems.
Here are a few reasons as to why they are so important:
1. Whales play an important role in stabilizing the marine food chain. As more whales are killed food supply in the ocean becomes destabilized and causes changes in the food supply of many other kinds of life.
2. Scientific studies of the cetacean species (whales, dolphins and porpoises) has led to a lot of discoveries and advancements regarding echolocation, marine environments, marine life/biology and marine mammal intelligence, etc.
3. Whale feces plays a large role in stabilizing the carbon in the atmosphere providing cleaner air and ecosystems for land and marine environments
4. Whale watching and various other activities have brought in billions of dollars helping to create economic growth in various cities, and countries.
Of course whales do more for the oceans than just these four things, but within areas like ecotourism we find places that take advantage of ocean ecosystems and can cause devastation rather than show the beauty of these creatures. Whales need to be protected as they are extremely important to our oceans, and deserve to live here amongst humans, without having the fear of death.
Author: Sarika Ganguli
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