Study: Whales Are Ecosystem "Engineers"

An anonymous reader writes Researchers had previously thought that, being excessively uncommon and migrant, whales didn't have much of an effect on the more extensive marine environment. However, a new study distributed in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment gives whales a role as "engineers" of the oceans. In the study, scientists from the University of Vermont suggest that the 13 types of extraordinary whale have an essential and positive impact on the capacity of seas, on carbon storage, and on the state of fisheries around the globe. "The decline in great whale numbers, estimated to be at least 66% and perhaps as high as 90%, has likely altered the structure and function of the oceans, but recovery is possible and in many cases is already underway," researchers wrote in an article announcing their investigation.

Comments

No they're not

[kruach aum]

Whales shape their environment, just as their environment has shaped them. That's how evolution works. Evolution is nothing but the establishment of equilibria between niches and the creatures occupying those niches. When either the niche or the creature (or the number of creatures) changes, of course the other will follow suit.

The new information in this article is that scientists have discovered a way in which whales influence their environment. Engineering has nothing to do with it.