TIL: Whale Poop Freshens Our Air | Today I Learned

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did you know that every time you breathe
you need to be grateful to whale poop
it’s true whales dive to the depths to
feed and then they come back after the
surface as they come back up to breathe
they poop and when they poop they bring
out this limiting nutrient that becomes
this fertilizer for this tiny tiny tiny
microscopic plants called phytoplankton
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phytoplankton use these nutrients to
photosynthesize when you photosynthesize
you’re releasing oxygen now 50 to 70% of
the oxygen we breathe is produced in the
oceans historically we killed a lot of
whales for oil for meat and as we did
that we changed the abundance and
distribution of these whales and their
fertilizer that’s actually a problem
because we need their byproducts we need
their poop to keep our oceans alive
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and that’s what we call them ecosystem
engineers because their survival is so
imperative to the functioning of that
entire ecosystem and everything around
them so every time you breathe you
really have to thank those whales and
their whale poop
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