This is scientific American's 60 second science. I'm Christopher Intagliata. Got a minute?

The world's oceans were once home to 10 times as many whales before the Captain Ahabs of the world came around.

Hunting hit big species the hardest, wiping out 99% of the Southern Hemisphere's blue whales, for

example.

And as the gentle giants disappeared, so did another lesser-known element of the oceans, their poop.

I've described it as sort of like over-steeped green tea, like well-steeped green green tea so it is very diffused in a big

plume. Joe Roman a conservation biologist at the University of Vermont. My

daughter's friend say I'm a whale poop scientist. And he says he studies all kinds.

When whales are feeding on krill, they're really high lipids, lots of fat, so it can be, it sort of clumps

together and floats at the surface. So there's a great variety of

the fecal plumes out there in the oceans.

Whale poop is important because it transports nutrients from the deep ocean up to the surface.

Sperum whales feed on giant squid and other deep sea creatures so they'll dive more than a

kilometer down. Then they come to the surface to breathe and digest. And as it turns out they

poop and they also pee so they're releasing these nutrients. Nutrients like

phosphorus which are slurped up by phytoplankton and algae which in turn is consumed by

zooplankton copepods or krill and those are either eaten by fish or they can be

eaten by seabirds. Some fish swim up rivers and die. Birds sprinkle the land

with their guano, and those deep sea nutrients slowly work their way into ecosystems

on land with the help of bald eagles and bears and the like.

Roman and his colleagues modeled how that conveyor belt of nutrients has slowed due to the huge

declines in whales, seabird and fish populations.

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