Credit: Robbie Shade/Creative Commons

Whales are the world’s largest animals, and they produce, as you might imagine, the world’s largest poops.

Researchers are finding that whale feces aren’t just recordbreaking: They actually play a really important role in marine ecology. With commercial whaling potentially resuming, it’s more important than ever to defend the world’s whale populations, including their emissions.

As in humans, whale poop can be a significant indicator of overall health. Researchers have been collecting stool samples and analyzing them for years. Along the way, they’ve found a variety of evidence that whale poop interacts with marine ecosystems. This interest isn’t purely scatological: Understanding how whales affect the marine environment is an important part of building a case for conserving whales, including a case for stopping commercial whaling.

Feces in general tend to be rich in nutrients, and whale poop is no exception. When they defecate, they produce a rich array of nutrients for algae and microorganisms, some of which turn into whale food — or feed the things that whales eat. […]