Indeed, Sponge Bob has been trying to warn us about evil plankton for years now.
Seriously, though, if krill population were not kept in check by whales, wouldn’t the krill eat up all the phytoplankton, that play a huge role in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (and thus help keep global warming in check)? Also, that would presumably be followed by a mass die-off of krill, due to starvation, which would also be very disruptive to the ocean ecosystem, I should think.
Well that’s fair, however insect killer serves the even grander purpose of stopping them making more mosquitoes.
Actually one interesting benefit I’ve read is mosquitoes are credited with helping save the African mega fauna. Basically mosquitoes transmit sleeping sickness. Humans stayed out of sleep sickness areas, or died. The mega fauna is immune so this provided them natural sanctuaries.
re: whales: Yes, I was thinking that either:
a) they limit the krill population and/or bring food in the form of poop or their corpse to deeper water
b) however, doesn’t a beached whale break this cycle? Wouldn’t a beached whale be pretty much meaningless to the ocean ecosystem?
re: mosquitoes
Yes, I was thinking they create fish food, but then there are many species of mosquito that inhabit brackish or standing water (with a much more limited fish population) or lay their eggs on dry land.
Again, you’re falling into the wrong idea that a creature has to have a purpose beyond reproducing.
Mosquitoes feed my frogs just fine. Whale carcases sustain an amazing variety of deep sea life for periods up to decades, see Whale fall - Wikipedia and Google image hits for the phrase “whale fall”.
No doubt it is true that from a Darwinian (and atheistic) perspective there is no *ultimate *or intrinsic purpose for the existence any particular species or individual organism. However, it does not follow that it is illegitimate to talk about them having a purpose or value relative to something, such as the maintenance of some ecosystem, that we human beings value. If whales help to slow global warming (as I suggested they might, up-thread - I do not know if it is actually true), and if we don’t want out coastlines flooded by rising seas, then whales have a value and purpose for us.
It is silly and pedantic to require people to spell out that they mean a value or purpose relative to human values and purposes every time they use teleological language.
Well (no pun intended), whales that beach themselves contribute to the land ecosystem. It has already served the ocean ecosystem for it’s entire life (100+ years perhaps), the ocean is only missing out on one last huge meal.
Well in all seriousness, you are right about the death benefit to an ecosystem. I used to work in an industry related to the salmon hatchery system in the NW of the USA and Canada. The salmon were hatched, released, went to sea, and the ones that weren’t caught by fishermen or predators returned to spawn again in generally the same stream where they were hatched.
So they return to the hatchery, get clubbed on the head, milked for sperm and eggs, and the next generation was raised to be released again. The dead fish carcasses were taken away for processing into animal feed. Nice clean stream with no smelly dead fish in it.
The problem that began to get studied and acknowledged was that by removing the dead bodies of the salmon from the stream, a huge amount of needed nutrients were being removed from the stream too. Nutrients that the baby fish needed to feed on as they left the stream and slowly made their way toward the ocean. The whole system of handling the dead parent fish was creating sterile streams. The dead parent fish are supposed to remain rotting in the stream to feed the bugs that the next generation needs to survive. The spawned out fish that would normally have died in the stream and rotted are important, the dead fish being dragged by other animals out into the forest fertilize the trees. Micro-nutrients and minerals taken from the sea are returned to the land.
Toward the end of my involvement in the industry we were developing a salmon carcass analog, a dried fish pellet that could be used to seed areas by the air or with volunteers packing and hand seeding them, to return the nutrients to the streams and surrounding areas. It has become a more common practice now to return the dead fish to the stream.
It was another example of the Law of Good Intentions. In this case dead, smelly and rotten are the desireable conditions, not to be neatened up by well meaning people.