Until recently, ocean scientists have lacked the ability to study and observe directly the functional roles of whales in marine ecosystems. Now with radio tagging and other technologies they can better understand these roles.
“The focus of much marine ecological research has been on smaller organisms, such as algae and planktonic animals. These small organisms are essential to life in the sea, but they are not the whole story,” Roman said.
New observations of whales will provide a more accurate understanding of historical population dynamics and “are likely to provide evidence of undervalued whale ecosystem services,” note the ten scientists who co-authored this new paper, “this area of research will improve estimates of the benefits – some of which, no doubt, remain to be discovered – of an ocean repopulated by the great whales.”
The new study was written by Joe Roman, University of Vermont; James A Estes and Daniel Costa, University of California, Santa Cruz; Lyne Morissette, M Expertise Marine, Sainte-Luce, Canada; Craig Smith, University of Hawaii, Manoa; James McCarthy, Harvard University; JB Nation, University of Hawaii, Honolulu; Stephen Nicol, University of Tasmania, Tasmania, Australia; Andrew Pershing, University of Maine, Orono, and Gulf of Maine Institute; and Victor Smetacek, Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany.
Check the following link to read/download the Full Study – “Whales as Marine Ecosystem Engineers”:
http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/130220
Source: University of Vermont.
