The ocean carbon cycle is a major driver of the world's climate and further investigation on existing gaps in whale ecology will help clarify their contribution to it, stressed the team.There are other potential pathways in which whales can contribute to carbon capture: through their biomass in which carbon is kept for decades (depending on their life span); and when a whale dies by falling to the ocean floor where it may eventually be covered by sediment.And while whales were vital to the healthy functioning of marine ecosystems, Dr. Meynecke said overstating their ability to prevent or counterbalance human-induced changes in global carbon budgets may unintentionally redirect attention from well-established methods of reducing greenhouse gases.

 

Previous estimations neglect the scale in which carbon sequestration occurred both temporally and spatially. Some of the pathways suggested for carbon sequestration such as whale falls (when whales die and sink to the ocean floor but retain carbon for decades) also underestimate the breathing of whales.It is important to acknowledge that there are other values of whales that are more relevant to drive their conservation than carbon capture.Large scale protection of marine environments including the habitats of whales will build resilience and assist with natural carbon capture at a global scale.