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Whales and Food Webs

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A simple Antarctic food chain and the secret of the success of the baleen whales - keep the chain short and transfer as much energy as possible as efficiently as possible.

Words

Plankton: organisms that live in the top layers of water whether sea, lake, river, stream etc. Plankton are at the mercy of the currents and movement of the water. Some plankton dwellers can move about within the water column, up and down, but generally drift where the tides and currents take them.

Phytoplankton: Phyto - plant, Plankton - see above. These are the tiny plants that capture the energy of the sun and turn it into food, these are the Producers of the Antarctic food web.

Producer: Organism that produces food. Usually a green plant, anything from a tree to microscopic algae. The raw materials are sunlight for energy and carbon dioxide and water. Producers drive all food webs and chains. At each step along the chain energy is lost, usually around only 10% or much less is passed on.

Zooplankton; Zoo - animal, Plankton - see above. These are the tiny (and not so tiny) animals that feed directly on the phytoplankton

Whales are the largest animals ever to have lived, larger even than the largest dinosaurs. There are two reasons that they have managed to attain such enormous size - well over a hundred tonnes for the largest blue whales and nearing this amount for some other whale species.

bullet1/ They live in the oceans and so the buoyancy of the water can support their great bulk without having to be supported and moved on land by legs and muscles. Like most other animals, the density of a whale is very close to that of water.
bullet2/ They feed very close to the bottom of the food chain. Energy for the vast majority of life on earth comes in from the sun and is captured by plants. These plants are fed on by animals, that are in turn fed on by other animals. At each step of this food chain energy is lost and so less energy is available to animals higher up the chain.

The consequence of this is that the higher up a food chain you get, the lower the biomass of animals (that is number of animals multiplied by their weight).

As whales tap the food chain low down - close to the producers, relatively little energy is lost and so more is available to the whales, so they are able to grow to enormous sizes.

Antarctic Ocean Food Web

The Antarctic Food Web is relatively simple compared to ecosystems in other parts of the world. There are fewer different species, but greater numbers of them. The second most numerous large mammal in the world (after man) is the crab-eater seal, an archetypal Antarctic animal.

A key part of the Antarctic food web are krill small shrimp-like crustaceans that the great majority of Antarctic animals, seal, whales, penguins and other birds, fish etc. feed upon.

 

The whaling gallery is a collection of images from a whole range of sources. It is intended to inform and illustrate a now (thankfully) vanished occupation and way of life that for the men so engaged was hard and often dangerous. It is intended for historical interest rather than a commentary on the ethics of whaling.

Whaling related items at ebay books, pictures, collectables

Whaling books
Amazon.com Buy from Amazon USA

Whaling books
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Whales and Dolphin
Whales and Dolphins
Poster 39" x 27"
More whale pictures

Whales 2007 Wall Calendar
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Humpback Whales of Australia Kids T-Shirt

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Lonely Planet travel guide Antarctica
USA
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Buy from Amazon UK


Shackleton 2002
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The Endurance - Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition
The Endurance - Shackleton's Legendary Expedition 2000
Dramatization with original footage
Buy from Amazon USA DVD  VHS
Buy from Amazon UK DVD

Antarctica Dreaming (HD DVD + DVD Combo Disc) By HDScape
Antarctica Dreaming

HD DVD + DVD
Combo Disc - 2007


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