Envato Elements
Humpback whale specimen
Whale urine is much more important to the ocean than you might think. How important? The answer may be surprising — and yes, it does involve urine.
How much of the ocean is actually whale pee, and what is its importance in the seas of our planet?
Although a single fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus) can produce up to almost thousand liters of urine per dayit is not true that the seas are salty because of the urine of these cetaceans (nor, as the joke goes, because there is too much cod in sauce).
According to , no one has calculated for sure the total volume that urinating cetaceans add to the ocean mix, but what marine biologists have recently shown is that it is crucial for the health of the seasbecause it displaces large amounts of nutrients from one side to the other.
This happens mainly through your migratory patternssince baleen whales (Mystics), which feed by filtration, usually make long trips between hotter and colder regions.
Female humpback whales, for example, feed in the Gulf of Alaska and then swim thousands of kilometers to the Hawaiian archipelago to give birth.
This happens because the offspring are born without a thick layer of fat insulation present in adults, which is why it is important start life in warm seas and relatively sheltered. At the same time, the best places for whales to feed are krill-rich waters cold and polar seas.
When they leave towards the breeding areas, the whales, in general, stop feeding and begin to metabolize stored energy in the fat layer. As a result, release nutrients in the form of urine and feces that they consumed in higher latitudes.
This horizontal flow of nutrients is known as the Great Whale Conveyor Beltthe “great whale conveyor belt”.
A. Boersma
Many whales travel thousands of km from their summer feeding grounds to their winter breeding and calving grounds. Nitrogen and other elements can be released in the form of urine, carcasses, placentas, peeling skin and feces.
The urine that “circulates” on this conveyor belt is especially important. A study published in March this year in Nature Communications showed that gray whales, humpbacks and right whales together transport close to 4,000 tons of whiplash per year.
Around the Hawaiian Islands, migrating whales nearly double the amount of nutrients entering shallow waters—which is critical, because those nutrients stimulate the growth of phytoplanktoninjecting energy into marine food chains.
Well, then, if it’s not because of whale pee or soaked cod, then?
