What's cooler than a dead sperm whale? A living sperm whale — and its poop, this expert says

CBC News

· Posted: Apr 02, 2025 5:30 PM EDT | Last Updated: 12 minutes ago

A Newfoundland antheral made quality with his originative photography of a dormant sperm whale this week, but 1 whale adept says the viral video has much worth than elemental entertainment.

Hal Whitehead, a biologist and prof astatine Dalhousie University, says helium could archer conscionable from the images taken by Brendon Gould that the whale was astatine slightest 12 metres long.

"Pretty big, but not arsenic large arsenic they get," Whitehead said successful an interrogation Wednesday.

"And it's a male. You tin spot the spot sticking out."

Whitehead says the whale was apt successful its precocious teens. Around that age, antheral sperm whales successful particular tend to determination from the tropics to the cooler North Atlantic.

If the dormant whale had lived agelong enough, he'd likely have made his mode to the Arctic, disconnected the seashore of Greenland.

But Whitehead says the whale's travel wasn't immoderate seasonal migration.

"I think he was conscionable surviving his life," helium said, floating astir the Strait of Belle Isle oregon the Gulf of St. Lawrence, munching connected monkfish, deepwater sharks and adjacent squid.

But past thing happened to him, the adept explained.

What happened to him?

Typically, antheral sperm whales question successful pods. When you spot 1 by itself, it's apt sick oregon got caught successful immoderate ice.

But it could besides beryllium injured arsenic a effect of quality activity: trawling and ships tin termination whales, too.

Whitehead says helium can't archer from the video, but says dissimilar different whale species, the sperm whale colonisation isn't doing excessively severely these days.

An estimated 1.5 cardinal sperm whales existed successful the 1700s, earlier humans began hunting them for their oil, which was used for candles and lubricating machinery. Those numbers bottomed retired astir the 1980s earlier starting to rebound.

But the whales are inactive an integral portion of the water ecosystem: businesslike sidesplitting machines that hunt the types of animals humans don't, restoring equilibrium to the seas.

Whitehead explains that astir of the nutritionally dense plankton lives adjacent the aboveground of the ocean. When those plankton die, they descend — along with the nutrients.

But sperm whales aquatics deep.

"All that worth is lost to the water ecosystems unless it's brought backmost up. And that's what the sperm whale does," Whitehead said.

"The sperm whale goes down determination and eats each these unusual squid, unusual fish, whatever, and past it comes to the aboveground and it poops. And successful its poop it's putting retired each kinds of important nutrients, which [would] different beryllium lost."

There's about 850,000 sperm whales successful the Earth's oceans today, according to a 2022 survey spearheaded by Whitehead himself.

Sadly, the 1 that washed up connected Newfoundland's seashore won't get the accidental to aquatics backmost to the tropics and mate. But it's imperative that the whales bash get that chance, Whitehead says, and that means examining immoderate whale carcass that does lavation ashore for signs of illness oregon human-caused injury.

And that means backing the scientists and groups who tin marque those diagnoses.

"What we request to bash ... is to truly look astatine these animals that travel ashore and spot if we tin fig retired what's happened to them, however aged they are and truthful on," Whitehead said.

"Getting that accusation is precise tough. But I deliberation it's highly important that the radical who bash this enactment beryllium supported and helped ... both financially, and by different radical telling them wherever the whales are."

Download our free CBC News app to motion up for propulsion alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Click here to sojourn our landing page.