An illustration of the (A) pre-whaling and (B) post-whaling interactions between whales, shrimp-like krill (pink), and photosynthesizing organisms known as phytoplankton (top left of each panel) in ...

Whales of all shapes and sizes play a significant role in the health of marine ecosystems. About 50% of the air humans breathe is produced by the ocean, thanks to phytoplankton and whale waste. The ...

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What can whale poop teach us about ocean nutrients? This is what a recent study published in Communications Earth & Environment hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated a link between a ...

In the 20th century, people’s demand for whale blubber and baleen drove industrial whalers to kill roughly three million whales—a whopping 99 percent of the world’s large whale population. The ...

The blue whale is the largest animal on the planet. It consumes enormous quantities of tiny, shrimp-like animals known as krill to support a body of up to 100 feet (30 meters) long. Blue whales and ...

A recent theory proposes that whales weren't just predators in the ocean environment: Nutrients that whales excreted may have provided a key fertilizer to these marine ecosystems. Oceanographers now ...