It was the Labour Day weekend, and I picked up a whale of a tale. At Powell River BC, we sat with our grandchildren at the water's edge in the Seasider Restaurant. It was early evening, and the setting sun glinted off the ocean as we looked westward toward Texada Island.The setting sun beautifully illuminates the majestic sight of whale plumes soaring 20 feet into the air about a half kilometre offshore. The children, excited and curious, track the blow plumes as they gracefully move southward down Malaspina Straight. Then, a magnificent tail emerges from the water, leaving us in awe.Humpback whales have become a common sight in my town. The BC ferry often has to perform evasive maneuvers during the daily four-round trips of the east-west run from Powell River to Comox-Courtney.Blubber Bay is on the north end of Texada Island, where a local ferry now stops. Blubber Bay was where Captain Cook first contacted the Tla'amin Nation, (formerly known as the Sliammon First Nation.) Blubber Bay was a whaling station in the heyday of the industry, where blubber was sliced up (flensing) and rendered (try pot) from slaughtered whales. The last west-coast station at Coal Harbour on north Vancouver Island closed in 1967.By the late 1930s, more than 50,000 whales were killed annually worldwide. In 1982, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) decided that commercial whaling of all whale species should pause from 1986 onwards because of the extreme depletion of most whale stocks. The taking of whales had been an economic lynchpin for early B.C.There is still a lot of whale hunting around the world. Canada left the International Whaling Commission in 1982 in protest, as it wanted to continue killing whales. But, aboriginal groups are the only ones that continue the practice.In our region, whales are protected as they safely swim past Blubber Bay. They were nearly hunted to extinction, but they are back and are valued by whale-watching tourist boats.After being on the brink of extinction in the 20th century, whales are now experiencing a resurgence, reappearing in areas they haven't been seen in decades. This is not just good news for nature enthusiasts and whale watchers; it's a testament to the vital role whales play in the Earth's oceans, offering hope for a healthier marine ecosystem.The growth of Earth’s ecosystems is often limited by a sufficient quantity of certain nutrients, usually nitrogen or phosphorus. When a farmer fertilizes a field of corn, these create a surplus of those nutrients and allow the ecosystem, in this case the cornfield, to grow more productive until it reaches the next limit, be it another nutrient or some other constraint like light or water availability.The ocean's limiting nutrient is often iron. Phytoplankton, the microscopic algae that form the base of the aquatic food chain, need iron to photosynthesize. The problem is that most of the iron in the ocean is inside other organisms, and thus is not available for phytoplankton. Whales complete the cycle by eating massive quantities of tiny creatures like krill and expelling iron in their feces. This iron acts as an oceanic fertilizer, creating algae blooms that feed the krill and countless other species.Besides propping up marine food chains, phytoplankton also capture an enormous amount of carbon dioxide—the equivalent of around four Amazon rainforests. The climate journalist Sam Matey recently summarized just how essential whales are to this process: “It looks like whale poop is the key factor determining the productivity of Earth’s oceans…Preliminary calculations estimate that returning the whole Southern Ocean to historical whale numbers, with the associated phytoplankton boom, would be the equivalent of adding an entire continent’s worth of new forests.”Around a third of the world’s oceans are iron-limited, which means marine ecosystems have the potential to become much more productive and much more effective at managing the Earth’s climate. Unfortunately, whales reproduce slowly and take many years to reach sexual maturity, so it will be a while before whale populations return to historical levels.Could humans help jump-start the process? Iron is, after all, one of the most abundant elements on Earth. Scientists have considered iron fertilization a possible climate mitigation strategy for decades, but experiments have proven controversial and politically fraught. Perhaps whales will provide the evidence needed to pursue the idea further.In Powell River, we still feel the “wow” when we see the fins of killer whales or the plumes of humpbacks on our local ferry ride.
