this is a humpback whale one of the world's largest animals it can grow up
to 18 metres long and weigh up to 40 tonnes
recently however the humpback whale gained a new feature
a price tag it is now worth two million dollars but why because big whales can
help humanity in the fight against climate change
it's an ecosystem service that could be worth millions of dollars per whale
according to new analysis by economists who asks the question how much is a
whale worth it's an exceptional way of saving our climate
but how can whales be valued in dollars and how can these marine mammals have an
effect on our climate let's put this under the microscope whales combat
carbon naturally big whales like filter feeding baleen and sperm whales help
sequester carbon they hoard it in their bodies stockpiling tons of carbon a
piece like giant swimming trees we all know that trees are effective carbon tax
a mature tree absorbs up to 22 kilos of carbon dioxide each year but next to
these marine giants there's no comparison a single whale with an
average lifespan of 60 years stores about 33 tons of carbon dioxide that
means one whale is equivalent to 1,500 trees
when a whale dies its carcass sinks to the bottom of the sea the carbon stored
in it is taken out of the atmospheric cycle for hundreds or even thousands of
years
but whales do even more to fight climate change they provide a special eco
service called the whale pump in the depths of the ocean whales feed on tiny
marine organisms like plankton and krill then they return to the surface where
they release huge fecal plumes floating masses of pee and poo rich in iron
phosphorus and nitrogen exactly the substances plankton needs to grow and
more plankton is just what the planet needs plankton captures an estimated 40%
of all the co2 produced worldwide and it contributes at least 50% of the oxygen
in our atmosphere it would take for Amazon rainforests to
capture the equivalent amount of co2 in recent years scientists have discovered
that plankton is blooming along the migratory routes of waves travelling
between their breeding and feeding grounds whales excrete nutrition into
oceans all over the world iron into cold waters and nitrogen and phosphorus into
warm seas so the more whales there are the more plankton there is and the more
carbon can be absorbed that's great geoengineering but what about the price
tag how can these whale characteristics be converted into dollars and cents
that's where a nature-loving economist steps in he wanted to drive home how
important whales are so he put it in terms people could understand money he
took the per ton price of carbon and multiplied it by the quantity that a
single great whale could store in its body the result each whale weighed out
to an average of two million dollars this was a surprise even to the expert
himself Ralph Shami the 2 million came out and I
was in total shock midnight I was convinced I had made a
mistake but there was no shake and shimmy went on if you take two
million and you multiply by what we have right now well the total population of
Wales is about one point two five but I'm talking only about the great whales
and if you look only at the great whales you're talking about over a trillion
dollars in terms of the value of this chamois knew that giving whales a price
tag would get some attention in his world but how did he calculate the price
you could easily do this exercise without using any pricing you just use
you just figure out how much carbon the whales captured directly or indirectly
and and then you compare it to what trees and mangroves and salt marshes and
and other creatures capture and then you can do the same calculations but I
thought using the dollars and cents also allows me to use the market the market
in order to to you know get money in in in in galvanized also other kinds of
mechanism market mechanism that would help us get the whole society around
around saving the whales about five hundred years ago before commercial
whaling started there used to be between four and five million whales swimming in
the world's oceans it's well known that over-exploitation led to a serious
decline in many of the world's whale populations according to the
International Whale Commission many species are now in the process of
recovering although not all a new study has also established that in the western
South Atlantic humpback whales have recovered strongly and their current
abundance is close to 25 thousand whales the population status is much more
optimistic than previously thought and abundance should reach its pre
exploitation level within the next ten years
currently there are more than 1 million whales in our oceans but can they all
return to their pre whaling numbers realistically in light of what's
happening to our planet and the change that's happening so quickly for us I
thought it was much more useful for us to ask how long will it take for us to
double the population rather than try to figure out how long that go back to pre
whaling I don't think it's realistic especially because each each whale
species is reacting differently if we were to kind of do a rough estimate
based on the data we have it would take over 30 years to double the population
even a slight recovery of the population would help the planet a 1% increase in
plankton productivity would capture hundreds of millions of tons of
additional co2 each year a scenario equivalent to the sudden appearance of
two billion mature trees I truly believe that we should be doing something about
it by coming out and and saying the whales are the global treasure or in the
language of economics international public good
hopefully that enormous value of whales will drive politicians and other
powerful people to strengthen the protection of whales we have to save the