Scientists studying the ocean ecosystem around Antarctica have discovered that krill must be eaten by whales for their population to thrive. This is something that scientists didn't know until they better understood the total ecosystem.

Mathew Savoca is a marine scientist specialising in baleen whales.

Krill have a huge impact on the ocean as well as the climate.

Krill are eaten by whales which digest them and release their faeces into the surface waters of the Southern Ocean. This fertilises the phytoplankton which then flourish and become food for the krill in an ecological cycle.

Industrial whaling in the 19th and 20th centuries hugely depleted the whale populations. Although Humpback whales have made a come-back, Blue whales have still not recovered. Thus the fertilisation process is much reduced and so krill numbers are also much less than they were prior to whaling. The lack of recovery of the krill population was a mystery to scientists who expected that killing the whale predators would allow the krill to flourish.

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