Apart from being glued to the race tracker during the legs of this Ocean Race, I have found one other new hobby that brings me immense joy. Whenever a new drone photo of the Malizia - Seaexplorer is uploaded to social media, after visually enjoying it for a moment or two, I begin to play my own adapted version of the “Where is Waldo?” game. However, instead of searching for Waldo, I search for the tiny figure of our onboard reporter Antoine Auriol, who is flying the drone steadily from the deck.

When I finally spot him, my first thought will usually concern the sheer size of the racing machine in comparison to a single human being. Quite jaw-dropping to say the least. Even more mind-blowing, however, is the fact, that there will at times be animals surrounding the man-made mammoth of a boat, that can naturally grow up to more than 1,5x the boat in length: Whales.

Size-wise, a whale is hard to miss, yet the importance of the whale for our Ocean, our planet or even for you as a single person, is often overlooked.

There are many different whale species that live in all parts of our world’s Ocean ranging in size from 2,6 meters (dwarf sperm whale) all the way to 29,9 meters (blue whale).

Whales evolved from land-living mammals over time into fully aquatic species solely coming up to the water’s surface for oxygen. Whales are also thought to be highly intellectual, as their brain-to-body-mass ratio is second only to humans and they are known to imitate human speech after being in captivity for long periods of time. 

However, these majestic mammals are experiencing great losses.

Populations are shrinking drastically in size because of global warming, human-related ocean exploitation and the increase in marine traffic.

I have postponed going into detail about the exact threats that whales are facing until the end of this article. To be able to view the threats as obstacles we need to overcome instead of circumstances we have to live with, it is vital to first understand the important role of the whale in connection to the Ocean and climate change.

Now if you, like me, have lived a relatively normal life and not sailed across the Ocean, the closest you will have ever been to something related to a whale would have been in a museum or on your television in a nature documentary. Assuming this, the survival of the whale might seem irrelevant to you in the greater scheme of things. Though in reality, whales help you as a human being every few seconds.

It’s a common saying, that every second breath we take comes from the Ocean. And in fact, every other time we breathe, we can be thankful for the whales, their behaviour - and their poo.

Whales have the habit of diving down to great depths and then rising to the surface to breathe. When doing so, they positively create an upward nutrient-carrying biological pump. In addition to these otherwise scarce nutrients, whale fecal matter also contains high amounts of nitrogen and iron. Fertilised by the nutrients supplied by the whales, phytoplankton, a photosynthesizing organism, can then produce high amounts of oxygen that are vital to most living beings on this planet – including, as a human being, you.

In conclusion, a greater population of whales leads to a larger amount of carbon binding phytoplankton in our oceans that benefits our planet tremendously.

In our fight against climate change, it is crucial to reduce greenhouse gasses. In this context, the whale can be of further great value.

As mentioned earlier, whales can grow up to great lengths and therefore have an accordingly large body mass. Throughout their life, Great Whales for example, can accumulate 33 tons of CO2 on average, binding the carbon from the atmosphere as body mass and sinking this large amount of carbon to the bottom of the Ocean after their death, locking it away for centuries. In comparison, a tree can ”only” absorb 48 pounds (> 22 kg) of CO2 annually.

Whales are a gift that just keeps on giving: After their deaths, their carcasses will create habitats and act as a food source for marine life.

Taking a step back and looking at the benefits of whales and the threats to their livelihoods, it is quite easy to conclude, that we humans haven’t been pulling our weight fairly when it comes to our relationship with whales. So, often we look for the answer to the climate question in innovation and science, but combatting climate change does not always need big new ideas.

Just like in sailing, we need also to rely on nature's natural powers. The solution to saving whale populations could be the hardest as well as easiest solution ever. 

Firstly, the difficult part: We need to play the blame game and take accountability.

How can we reduce the threats to marine life that are originating from human activities? Reducing these threats will take a great amount of joint effort in order to change the way we use our Ocean. This admittedly will not be easy and could require some hardship and certainly tenacity in the short term. But long term the necessity of taking such actions will become clear, as we realise, what is good for the planet is also good for us.

The second part of the solution is easy: For a change, we don’t always need to jump into action and plant trees or come up with a big new bank-breaking invention, but instead do absolutely nothing: We need to let whales be whales and the Ocean be Ocean.

Historically, whales have always had a huge target on their back. Hunted as food, for traditional medicine or as a trinket by so-called “whalers”. The effects of the once-legal commercial whaling industry are still noticeable today, with the populations still not recovered and reduced to an estimated 1/4th of their previous size.

Another direct link to the decrease in the whale population concerns marine traffic.

According to the non-profit “Friend of the Sea”, annually an estimated 20,000 whales suffer and in effect die from ship collisions. This is a considerable amount, as some critically endangered species, such as the North Atlantic Right Whale (named that because it was the right whale to hunt), have been reduced to a population size of 500. 

Additionally, whales’ behaviours are influenced by sound pollution, specifically sonar interference, which is known to trigger mass strandings as well as confuse the whales, leading them to change depth quickly and consequently suffer from decompression sickness.

Further accelerating the decline in populations, whales are unintentionally becoming entangled in fishing nets or being caught as bycatch by large commercial fisheries.

Considering the size of a whale, it should not come as a surprise, that whales are at the top of the food pyramid. On the one hand, this is good, as they have no predators, on the other hand, this means that whales rely on the health and abundance of all species below them in the food chain. Therefore, one can view the increase and decline of whales as a direct indicator of the health of the Ocean’s other inhabitants.

Apart from the abundance of specific food declining due to climate change and overfishing, global warming is also having an impact on the whales living in ice regions. Due to the ice patterns changing, certain whale species are getting trapped, as they cannot use their typical routes. In addition, due to the ice melting, the amount of zooplankton that grow on the ice and act as a food source for some species is lessening, resulting in whales becoming more vulnerable and experiencing nutritional stress.