Episode Summary: while whales are impressive creatures, these sea mammals can also play an important role in carbon sequestration

In this conversation, Leekei, Brian and Olabanji discuss why whaling must stop and highlight the important role whales can play in the fight against climate change.

Topics include:

• why the carbon sequestration potential of one whale is worth thousands of trees,
• the environmental (and financial) value of one whale (about 2 to 3 million USD)
• role of whales and every living being in the ocean in the food cycle, and the impact when the cycle breaks
• whale poop
• why do some countries continue whaling
• the carbon sequestration potential of oceans
• what can we do to help whales?

LAST MINUTE UPDATE: this conversation was recorded at the end of May and on June 21st, 2023, Iceland’s Food Minister announced a three-month suspension of whaling in the name of animal welfare

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Don’t Take Our Word For It, Look It Up!

Some resources mentioned:

The financial value of a whale by the IMF A strategy to protect whales can limit greenhouse gases and global warming

An article about whale poop by Deutsche Welle (DW) Fake Whale Poop May Save The Planet

About TV series Extrapolations

About the role of oceans in carbon sequestration Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures as a Fisherman Turned Restorative Ocean Farmer

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Featuring Carbon Almanac Contributors Leekei Tang, Brian Tormey and Olabanji Stephen.

Leekei is a fashion business founder, a business coach, an international development expert and podcaster from Paris, France. 

Brian is a Real Estate Title Insurance Professional and Goat Farmer in the US. 

Olabanji is from Lagos Nigeria. He’s a Creative Director and visual designer that helps brands gain clarity, deliver meaningful experiences and build tribes through Design & Strategy. He founded Jorney - a community designed to help people stay productive, accountable, and do their best work.

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The CarbonSessions Podcast is produced and edited by Leekei Tang, Steve Heatherington and Rob Slater.

Hi, I'm Ima.

I live in Scotland.

Hi, I'm Jen and I'm from Canada.

Hi, I'm Ola Ji and I'm from Nigeria.

Hello, I'm Leaky and I live in Paris.

Hey, I'm Rod.

I'm from Peru.

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Hello everyone, I'm Ola Ji.

Hi, I'm Brian.

And hi, I'm leaky.

And today we are going to talk about wells and Welling.

And I actually wanted to start off with something that, it's funny that,

uh, we're talking about wells and Welling because I don't know if you,

um, you are familiar with that, but Seth Godin often used the example

wells to illustrate systemic change.

Do you know that?

Yeah.

I didn't realize that.

Okay.

He often uses the example of, uh, wells, uh, used in the 19th century and, well,

oil, I guess it's from well blubber, and that was used for street lambs

and it almost led wells to go extinct.

Yeah, it rings a bell, right?

Yeah.

Now I remember these, these metaphors.

Yes.

Yes.

And what prevented wells from going extinct was not animal

rights groups like green piss.

I don't know if it existed, but like some kind of, um, animal rights groups.

But it was precisely because of the discovery of fossil fuels,

you know, quote unquote magic.

That comes with, uh, the discovery of fossil fuels.

Mm-hmm.

And all of a sudden, or I don't know, it's all of a sudden or gradually, I dunno, but

there was a shift from using well, oil to like the streets to using fossil fuels.

Yeah.

And well, oils was part of the know.

What he called the pre-industrial system and the discovery oil led to place well

oil and save the wells at the same time.

But here we go again.

Well, going back to Welling.

That's crazy.

That is so crazy.

It's interesting because I'm now Ola Bji and I were just talking about some of the

things happening here in the US related to the renewables industry and how.

It's not necessarily political action that's leading to as some of the change.

Mm-hmm.

But instead, it's actually that from a, from a financial incentive

perspective, with some of the tax dollars under one of our recent tax

policy changes that has yielded.

People starting companies to go build solar and wind farms, that because it

is now financially incentivized, there is, it is, it is beneficial to do so.

And so we are getting many new customers in this space very quickly and it is

exploding and growing in a wonderful way.

But I think you're right, leaky that.

That same concept.

It's not, I think the political action and advocacy is having unpact, but it's

also actually something else outside.

The political action that's also giving rise to some of the change we're seeing.

Right?

Sort of like just the discovery of fossil fuels leads to, well,

we don't, we don't need that.

And that leads to a good by not wailing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's very interesting.

I think we're seeing that today.

Well, I wanna talk about, can we talk about whales too?

And it, and, and I learned so much when you proposed this

topic, leaky, it was Ola ban.

With Olivan.

Yes, yes.

I like, I had so much fun.

I, I, I grew up on the Oregon coast, you know, near the Oregon coast.

Not exactly on it, but only a short bit away and spent time.

And we've got a lot of whale activity there on the west

Coast of the United States.

Oh really?

Um, And there's actually, it's now a thing that I do with my family.

Every year when we go back, we go out with this whale scientist on her boat with

her dog and go see whales every summer.

Um, and it's, they're such fascinating creatures, but I didn't

realize, so I've been fascinated with whales for a long time.

I didn't realize what a big role they play in the whole carbon cycle.

On the planet.

I did not comprehend that before this, but was just really, really

astounded by, by that part of it.

Can can we dive into that a little bit?

Man, I'm excited too.

That that's, um, that's huge, man.

I, I, I didn't know too until I saw that and I was like, wait, wait, wait.

Hold on.

What?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, let's dive in.

Just to share with our, our audience here, you know, a couple of different, um, you

know, sort of stats or, or facts here.

The, the whale population has declined greatly over, you know, uh, thousands

of years that whaling has been.

In place.

Mm-hmm.

Um, there are only a few countries that, and leaky, you

have some data points on this.

The whale population has declined over, you know, a few of the

last few thousand years in large part with human whaling activity.

Um, it's estimated that it's declined by somewhere between 66 and 90%.

So very significant.

Huge over that full stretch of time.

Wow.

Right.

Sort of crazy.

Um, and part of.

Some of what I had learned in re, you know, in doing some research for this was.

What that means to the whole, like the carbon cycle within the ocean.

And I didn't realize, you know, whales, we know they're, they're big

physical animals, but I didn't realize how much carbon they end up being.

It's like they're a really big tree.

Right?

Yes.

They're such large animals and they're principally made of carbon

as we are right in, in molecules that what ends up happening is they're a

really big carbon sink themselves.

The, the, their body that when they sink to the bottom of the ocean, And slowly

sort of decay into the ocean floor.

It act, it, it anchors and sequesters a lot of carbon into the ocean floor,

which leads to many other things.

And you know, the, the population of whales that would've sung that

would've pa passed away organically had we not had some of the wailing

activity, um, amounts to somewhere between, um, 190,000 to 2 million

tons of carbon sequestered per year.

That's the equivalent of like somewhere in the 40,000 to 400,000 cars, non-hybrid

cars or non-electric cars on the, the equivalent of the gas and carbon

dioxide creation in that, just from.

Just whales passing away year to year.

Just the, them living their life sequestering carbon in their

body and passing away, and we're missing out on much of that.

Like, that's how much we're missing out of, because we have

such a smaller whale population.

It is crazy.

But I have a, a couple of thoughts.

Uh, how long, how, what's the life expectancy of Well,

so if we kill a, well, it's.

I guess it's because it's a big animal.

It's must be, um, an animal with a very high life expectancy.

So if we kill it, we're killing this possibility of, of, of sequestering

carbon for a long, long time.

That's the first thing.

Mm-hmm.

And the second thing is, why do people keep welling?

What's the point really?

I, I don't know that I have an answer to your second question.

Leaky, I don't know that I'm gonna successfully answer that one, although

it, I'm sure there's a perspective, right?

And, and maybe we should try to speak to that.

Mm-hmm.

Um, average lifespan, this is from memory, is in the, is sort of human

lifespan length, right at the low side, you know, 30, 40 years at

the high side, 70 to a hundred.

I do believe there's some species that, that live even longer, longer than humans.

Um, I'll mention that podcast we talked about a few shows ago,

30 animals that made us smarter.

I think it was on there.

I listened to a bit about some sharks that live over 400 years, or sharks that

start breeding after their 400 years old.

Crazy.

Like there's, there's some, there's some life in the ocean that has

very long lifespans, but I think Wales sort of top out in the.

Hundred maximum to, if I recall correctly, in that kind of space.

I don't, I don't think they have like many, many hundreds of years as mammals.

Yeah.

They actually, I think on the average it's about a hundred years.

Yeah.

So when we are killing a well, uh, that means we're killing the, the

possibility of getting a sip string carbon for over the lifespan that is left.

Yeah.

Or whatever it is.

Yeah.

Yeah, actually, and um, probably an interesting thing to note is it's

like the value of Wales and I think it was, um, Jason Mamo that made a

post about the value of Wales and that was what really got me interested in

Wales and, and started having the chat.

He was like, one will is worth 3 million.

How do they calculate that?

Uh, I don't know how they calculate that.

Um, I, I think it is.

Partly because of, uh, the things that they produce, the amount of se, uh,

carbon that they're able to se star.

Um, and it's like the life of a whale is about, um, I think 80 something trees.

I can't remember it.

Oh yeah, I got it.

So they say that a large whale that leaves for a hundred years might

sequester more carbon than 1,500 trees.

Mm-hmm.

That's a lot of trees.

That's a lot of trees.

Yeah, that's a lot of trees.

The IMF did a, um, publish a report, um, back in 2019 that, that focused on the

benefits of putting whales in the ocean or supporting whale life in the oceans.

Trying to sort of, and speaking to, right, it's the International Monetary Fund.

So they're speaking to leaders of countries around the globe and they

tried to put a dollar value on it and they had a very similar figure, Ola bji,

um, which was, and again, this is four years ago, so there's been inflation,

et cetera, but, um, they valued.

The, the climate benefits.

Mm.

Not the value of the whale as a product.

As in Yes.

Kill it and sell its products, but the climate benefit Oh yeah.

Of value to countries, um, from a reduc reduction in other costs related

to climate change at over $2 million.

So in that same range per.

Per whale.

Wow.

Right.

And so if you think about it, like, and that's principally driven by, as

you said, their carbon sequestration.

And one of the interesting thought pieces that I read in,

in one article was, was around.

We think that there's a lot of land and there is a lot of land for tree

planting and that stuff, but in terms of the amount of arable land that trees,

the kind of trees that really sequester carbon that grow to a size and really

pack it in can successfully grow.

The amount of land available to that kind of ecosphere, relative to the amount of

ocean, three dimensional space that can support marine life, that does similar

things, whether it's the phytoplankton or the Wales, all along that value

chain, it is the, the arable land is a fraction, a tiny little fraction

of the amount of space in the ocean.

Available.

And so from a carbon sequestration point, we've got this amazing availability of

space to create carbon sequestration systems and support them in their

success in this global ocean ecosystem versus terrestrial land based land.

Um, and I just found that so interesting.

Wow.

Yeah, I, I've read that the ocean anyway, has a huge, uh, You know,

uh, carbon sequestration potential that, uh, we're not utilizing enough,

like even, uh, things like algae that can sequester lot of carbon.

And, uh, we, we had this conversation, um, a while ago in another episodes that, um,

I've read in the book called, um, it like a Fish that, I can't remember the exact

number, but for it, an equivalent of.

Of, uh, space, like the size of, of, I think, uh, one of the American state.

If we grow algae in that space, it will be able, we will be able to capture the

whole entire carbon dioxide in the world.

Something like that.

Uh, I might be wrong with the, with the, but it's has a huge carbon sequestration

potential, the ocean and algae.

Yeah.

Well, and here's, I'll come back to one of the, you know, it's gonna sound like to

our listeners that the only thing I like talking about is farts and burps and poop.

Cause I've brought it up on several different podcasts.

It's natural.

But I wanna talk about whale poop for a minute.

Um, So one of the things that I was fascinated by is that whales as they

go, as they consume a lot of, uh, plankton and phytoplankton, yeah.

Um, they, one of the things they do is they are, they are

concentrating and creating this iron rich concentration in their body.

That ends up leaving their body in the form of poop, right?

And so their whale poop or feces is extremely rich in iron, which

creates these when they rise back to the surface, right?

So they feed down deep often and then bring themselves back up to the surface.

Both collect new air and oxygen, um, and poop.

It turns out.

And what they do is their poop in these larger herds creates

these sort of this, um, this.

Potential.

It's almost like fertilizing your garden in a certain way all up near the

surface where it creates a, a bloom of phytoplankton because those phytoplankton

can grow quickly and vociferously with that iron rich poop mixed into the water.

And it creates these really big phytoplankton growth opportunities and.

Part of what that leads to is exactly as you just referenced, leaky.

It's similar to algae, it's a ton of carbon sequestration happening and

greening, you know, that's happening right there as a re as like a

byproduct of the whale and all those other benefits we just talked about.

Yeah.

Um, and I just found that, you know, and again, you're, everyone will think

that that's just a thing I'm into, but I love that whole cycle kind of.

Mentality and understanding how these systems really work in a,

in a full circle kind of way.

Um, so yeah, I thought that was pretty cool.

Yeah, because that helps all these other plants grow so, Yeah.

And, and then my question really is, why are, why are people or companies

wailing, why are they allowed to wa right.

What exactly do they need the whales for outside of the ocean?

Mm-hmm.

I, I've read somewhere again, you know, out of, um, out there on

the internet that in Iceland they.

Well, I shouldn't say excuse, but the reason for doing that is that

it's been a tradition and they want to keep the traditional alive.

But the sad thing is that the well that they kill, they don't even

keep it, they export it to Japan.

Who's, um, uh, uh, who's, I think Wells is still a delicacy and, uh, wells is

used in some, um, some cosmetic products.

So, It sounds really weird, you know, it's, you know,

we know that it's not good.

They keep killing the animals because it's part of the tradition and they won't

change, and then they don't even need this dead animals, so they export it.

And that's crazy because if you consider the, the effect of that,

say the value of a whale is about.

3 million or maybe two a, a little over 2 million.

Let's pick 3 million as a round figo.

And in Iceland, about 148 whales were shot in just one year.

Uh, even those 61 of them did not die instantly.

They, they kept shooting them until they died.

Um, and that's crazy because if you say, Uh, 3 million multiplied by the

number of wills that they killed us.

Well over 400 million.

And if you tell the, you know, government or companies, or communities

or whoever it is to bring that much money to fight climate change or

for sustainability reasons, uh, that that'll have to go through.

I mean, it, it, it is gonna, it is definitely going to be hotter.

To get that amount of money out, but then it's, it's right there in the

ocean for free and for some reason we, we just don't want it to be.

But I, I guess this is because the, um, the value of wealth does not

enter in the economic equation.

And this is the problem of an environment.

This is a, I don't know if it's possible to talk about positive

externality, but this is what you're mentioning is the positive externality.

And so if we can value it, It will, we will be able to appreciate the,

the benefit and the value of it, but the economy doesn't work that way.

That's a problem.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

It's pretty crazy.

And one of the other things I found interesting was this sort of, um, food

chain system that as the whale population declined, One of the things that happened

was that orcas or killer whales, as they're often called, um, Didn't have

sufficient feeding that there weren't as many whales to hunt themselves.

And so they started turning their predatory behaviors.

And if you've never seen one of these either on video or in person,

like they are impressive hunters.

Like we often think about lions or tigers as impressive hunters.

Boy, go check out orcas or killer whales.

Really, really impressive hunters.

But they've turned.

They've turned their hunting to smaller animals, including a lot

of seals, sea otters, and another sort of smaller sea life mammals.

And in so doing, one of the, I was really surprised at this, was that

those animals that the orcas are now feeding on instead of whales.

Were some of the animals that kept down the sea urchin.

Those little spiky spiny balls, um, which I stepped on once and got them in my foot.

Oh my goodness.

Okay.

You don't wanna step on a sea urchin.

They're not fun at all.

Um, ruined my, ruined much of my trip.

Oh yeah.

Um, but.

The population of sea urchins has blossomed because they aren't being

eaten by the sea otters and sea lions.

And so now with the sea urchins population blossoming so quickly,

they sea urchins feed in in kelp beds.

And they chew up, they, they eat the base of the plant, which then sort of

releases it and then it decomposes.

And so these big sea kelp forests are being sort of eaten up and destroyed by,

uh, by over eating, over consumption, by sea urchins, which really at attract.

And I'd read about that separately, but I didn't realize that that actually came in

part out of this like food cycle chain.

Deriving out of the whale population declining, and I

was like, I was like, whoa.

This other thing that we're worried about, actually the source starts here

as well with whale population declining.

Mm.

Yeah, I think everything is connected under the sea in the ocean.

I once did, um, a workshop on your understanding the, the links and the

cycle of, um, of, uh, life under in the ocean and how it affects climate change

and our lives and everything is linked.

Everything's connected.

Yeah.

But is, is there something, is there something we can do

aside, not killing whales?

I mean, that's going to have to be the first, but is there something we can do

to, we not, we don't kill whales anyway.

Yeah.

I mean, not, not us.

I mean the, the whale hunters.

Um, aside stopping will hunting.

Is there something we can do to.

Accelerate the growth of wells or help the population increase again?

That's an interesting question.

Yeah, I don't, I don't know the answer to that.

I know I.

I'm, I'm gonna venture to guess that some of the things we've talked about

in some of our other, um, podcasts and conversations have been, you know,

some of those classic things like, um, uh, microplastics, um, in that

are ending up in our water system.

Um, that leads to whether it leads to, you know, the non flourishing of Wales.

Or their food source or something else in that food chain cycle.

Um, I feel like the microplastics, it, you know, some of the, the

general ocean health, right?

Whales are these really big creatures living in this environment.

So General, general Ocean health, you know, I feel like is like one of those

classic ones that it's not very, my answer I guess to you is not very whale

specific, but I bet it helps whales.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think we've also talked about the coral reefs and a ton of

stuff about the ecosystem mm-hmm.

In, in the oceans.

And I think if, if we sort of start to pay more attention to

that, I, I guess you're right.

I guess that's, since everything is connected in the ocean, you know, just

paying attention to, to, you know, to pay respect to the life lives, uh, in

general, all sorts of lives in general in the ocean will help the wells prosper.

So.

Hmm.

That's my guess.

Yeah, I think that's correct.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, the other thing that I know is, is important

within, again, this sort of thing is like just thinking about right?

Like, A lot of whales currently end up dying because they're hit by ships.

Yeah.

Right.

So ships running into a whale is, is one of the sources and, and I don't know

whether it's a majority or even even a significant amount, but every time

you're ordering something that could be produced more locally, but where

it's being produced is across an ocean, that probably means a big container

ship is moving across that ocean.

To bring you that good, that item that whatever that is at a, you know,

possibly at a slightly lower price to you in the, in the economic sense,

but maybe a bigger cost to the planet in an environmental ecological sense.

So that's maybe another thing that can be very actionable for

people is just sort of think about.

Should I buy that locally or should I buy that from a manufacturer

in some country across some ocean from wherever this person lives?

Yeah.

That that makes sense.

It does.

Well, I want to, I, I couldn't not bring up.

Um, there's a recent television series called, it's on Apple

TV called Extrapolations.

That's a f that's a really great television series that I've, I've

very much been enjoying and I encourage people to check it out.

And one of the alums for my own alma mater, uh, Meryl Streep plays the

voice of the last whale on the planet.

In this, in this television series, and it's a, it's a wonderful, there's, I I,

no, I'm trying to, you know, not do any spoilers here, you know, go, go watch

the episodes and, and the thing, but, but as we, I was researching whales, having

just watched some of those episodes.

Where Whales feature predominantly I was, I was, I couldn't not bring it

up here to encourage our listeners to go check out that television series in

part cuz it, it's focused on what we can extrapolate the future might look like.

It's just a version based on where things are going today for, you

know, based on climate change.

Oh, that, that sounds interesting.

I'll probably watch that because I wasn't sure I wanted to spend time

on watching more television, but I'll definitely, because I was interested

in that series, so I will definitely thank you for Yeah, the feedback.

Yeah, agreed.

Okay.

Well this has been great.

I hope our listeners enjoyed today's little deep dive into Wales

Leaky and ji, thanks for bringing this up as a topic to look into.

I, I learned a lot.

Thanks everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you.

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