Joe Roman is a conservation biologist at the University of Vermont. This week, he gave a seminar at Utah State University as a guest of the Natural Resources department. Roman studies endangered species conservation and marine ecology, specifically whales.
“While I was studying the North Atlantic Right Whale — a critically endangered species — the first time I ever saw one in the 1990s," Roman said, "the whale came up right in front of the boat, and it comes up for a breath, and then before its terminal dive, it drops its flukes or its tail, and it released this big fecal plume in front of us. One of the first times I ever saw a whale in my life."
This observation sparked a question in Roman’s mind: Does whale excrement serve an important ecological role?
Whales feed in deep waters, then come to the surface to breathe, rest, digest — and defecate. As it turns out, whale feces play a significant role in cycling nutrients in the ocean. Not only from deep to shallow water, but across great distances.
“These are large animals that can travel thousands of kilometers each year, and that's the longest distance migration of any mammals on the planet,” Roman said.
In a March 2025 study published in "Nature Communications," Roman described the way whales transport nutrients as “the great whale conveyor belt.”
“The idea is that, in the summertime, many species of whales feed in high latitudes, which are nutrient-rich. There's a lot of krill, there's a lot of fish," Roman said. "Then they would migrate to lower latitudes, to places like Hawaii or the Caribbean, for example, where they breed, where they have calves.”
Roman estimates that migrating whales convey over 46,000 tons of biomass from their summer feeding grounds to their winter breeding grounds, cycling nutrients through the environment.
After being hunted nearly to extinction in the 19th century, whale populations have somewhat rebounded. However, whales today are threatened by shipping vessel strikes and fishing equipment, as well as by global issues like climate change and pollution.
“If we want to have a diverse world, we're going to need a new set of tools in order to protect these species," Roman said. "But it's not just about preventing extinction. It's also about promoting abundance, promoting these ecological systems that we've been talking about.”
