How To Protect The Ocean

A blue whale can swallow a volume of water bigger than its own body in a single gulp. That move, called lunge feeding, is one of the most extreme feats in the animal kingdom, and it only pays off when krill is packed into thick, dense swarms. In a thin patch, a blue whale gets back about six times the energy it spent. In a dense swarm, it gets back more than 200 times.
In this first episode of the Age of Giants series, Andrew breaks down how rorqual whales feed, then follows the krill. In 2025, the Antarctic krill fishery hit its 620,000 tonne precautionary limit for the first time and closed months early, with catches concentrated in the same Antarctic Peninsula waters where whales feed. Andrew also explains the "krill paradox": scientists now know whales eat about three times more than older estimates, and their iron-rich poop fertilizes the plankton that krill depend on. Whales help grow the very swarms they eat.
The episode closes on South Georgia, where whalers killed 42,698 blue whales and surveys recorded one sighting in twenty years. In 2020, researchers counted 58 blue whale sightings in three weeks. Andrew shares one simple action you can take today to keep more krill in the ocean for whales.
Takeaways
Rorqual whales (blue, fin, humpback) feed by lunging, expanding pleated throats to engulf huge volumes of water and prey.
A single blue whale lunge costs roughly 3,000 to 8,000 kilojoules, so lunge feeding only works on dense krill swarms.
A feeding blue whale in the eastern North Pacific can eat about 16 tonnes of krill a day.
The Antarctic krill fishery reached its 620,000 tonne trigger level for the first time in 2025 and closed early.
Whales recycle iron that fuels plankton growth; Southern Ocean whales recycle about one tenth of the iron they did before whaling.
Blue whales are returning to South Georgia after being hunted out locally, about 50 years after whaling ended there.
Action: skip krill oil and choose an algae-based omega-3 supplement.
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What happens to the heart of the largest animal on Earth when it charges into a swarm of krill? Dr. Ashley Blawas, a postdoctoral scholar in Jeremy Goldbogen's lab at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station, joins Andrew to unpack new research published in PNAS that measured the heart rates of lunge-feeding blue whales and humpback whales using suction-cup ECG tags.
Ashley explains the three phases of lunge feeding (accelerate, engulf, filter) and why these giants behave a lot like human sprinters. Their heart rates stay high after each lunge, then gradually recover while they glide and filter, refuelling muscles for the next burst. She also shares how body size gives big whales a heart rate range of roughly sevenfold, compared with about threefold in humans, which may be one of the keys to life at the largest scale.
Along the way, Ashley tells the story of how beach vacations in North Carolina and a biomedical engineering degree at Duke led her to whale physiology, how COVID pushed her PhD into molecular research, and where this work is heading next. Think minke whales, North Atlantic right whales, and one day a "smartwatch" that could help track whale health over time.
Takeaways
Lunge feeding has three phases: acceleration (about 4 m/s), engulfment (a few seconds), and filtering (up to 1 to 1.5 minutes in the largest blue whales).
Blue and humpback whale heart rates mimic human sprinters, staying elevated after a lunge and recovering gradually.
That elevated heart rate likely helps oxygenated blood restore energy stores between lunges.
Big whales access a heart rate scope of roughly 5 to 35 bpm, about sevenfold, versus about threefold in humans.
Data came from nine tag records on blue and humpback whales across multiple field seasons.
Tags attach with suction cups from a roughly 6 m carbon fibre pole and record for about 12 to 36 hours.
Lunge feeding only pays off when prey patches are dense, which makes finding those patches a survival issue.
Future work targets minke whales, ram-feeding right whales, and long-term health indicators like heart rate variability.
Links for Ashley's Work:
The PNAS paper discussed in the episode: Sprint-like cardiac dynamics support repeated acrobatic lunges in foraging rorqual whales
Ashley's website: ashleyblawas.com
Goldbogen Lab: goldbogen.stanford.edu and whales.stanford.edu
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In 1988, someone found a striped mussel the size of a fingernail in Lake St. Clair. Within a few years, zebra mussels coated pipes, boats, and the bottom of the Great Lakes, and they became the poster child for "it's too late." Andrew closes Marine Pollution week with the pollutant that breaks every rule: a living one that reproduces instead of diluting.
He follows two invaders. Zebra mussels rode in on ship ballast water, clogged power plant intakes, and stripped plankton from the base of the food web. Lionfish, likely released from home aquariums, spread from Florida across the Caribbean and cut the number of young native fish settling on reefs by about 79% in one experiment.
Then comes the fight back. Ballast water rules tightened between 1993 and 2008, and new invasions in the Great Lakes fell 85%, to the lowest rate in two centuries. In the Bahamas, keeping lionfish low on small patches of reef let native fish rebound by 50 to 70%. Andrew wraps with the role every boater and paddler plays: clean, drain, and dry, every time.
Takeaways:
Invasive species are biological pollution, and they multiply over time.
Zebra mussels arrived in ballast water and were found in Lake St. Clair in 1988.
Densities at one Michigan power plant topped 700,000 mussels per square metre within a year.
Lionfish likely reached the Atlantic through aquarium releases and now range from North Carolina to the Caribbean.
Lionfish cut the number of young native fish settling on test reefs by about 79% in five weeks.
Stricter ballast rules dropped new Great Lakes invasions from 26 to 4 per 13-year period.
Keeping lionfish numbers low on targeted reefs let native prey fish rebound by 50 to 70%.
Florida divers removed 31,773 lionfish in the 2024 Lionfish Challenge.
Ontario has required boaters to drain water and remove plants and animals before moving a boat overland since 2022.
Clean, drain, and dry every boat, canoe, kayak, or paddleboard between waterways.
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You rinse the yogurt tub, check the number on the bottom, and drop it in the blue bin. In Canada, only about 9% of plastic waste actually gets recycled, and the global rate is the same. Andrew breaks down why plastic is so hard to recycle, why microplastics are so hard to study, and what the controversy over plastic-in-the-brain headlines does and doesn't tell us.
Then the story moves to a beach in Stanley Park in 1994, where Vancouver Aquarium staff and volunteers started picking up trash and writing down what they found. That cleanup grew into a national program, and its data fed into the federal science assessment that led Canada to list plastic manufactured items as toxic and ban six single-use items. Industry groups took Ottawa to court and won the first round in 2023. On January 30, 2026, the Federal Court of Appeal reversed that ruling.
Andrew walks through what that win delivers: a ban projected to keep more than 22,000 tonnes of plastic pollution out of the environment over ten years, and a Federal Plastics Registry that tracks plastic from the producer to its end of life. He's honest about the setbacks too, then closes with the simplest action in the series: join a shoreline cleanup and record what you find.
Takeaways:
Canada recycled only about 9% of its plastic waste in 2016, and 86% went to landfill.
Globally, plastic waste doubled from 2000 to 2019, and 22% was mismanaged.
Plastic is many materials, which is a big reason recycling struggles.
Microplastics are everywhere, and that makes clean lab controls hard to find.
Some high-profile studies on plastic in the human body now face methodological challenges.
Volunteer shoreline cleanup data informed Canada's science assessment of plastic pollution.
Canada listed plastic manufactured items as toxic in 2021 and banned six single-use items.
The Federal Court of Appeal upheld that listing on January 30, 2026.
The Federal Plastics Registry now requires companies to report the plastic they put on the market.
Join a shoreline cleanup that records its data, and your tally counts.
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In 2001, government scientists started adding a tiny amount of the synthetic estrogen found in birth control pills to a remote lake in northwestern Ontario, at levels already measured in city wastewater. Within seven weeks, male fish were making egg-yolk protein. After two summers, some had eggs growing in their testes, and the fathead minnow population collapsed to about 1% of normal. Andrew explains how the same chemistry leaves our bodies every day, passes through treatment plants built for sewage and bacteria, and flows into rivers, lakes, and the coast.
Hormones are only part of it. In Sweden, researchers at Umeå University found that perch exposed to the anti-anxiety drug oxazepam, at levels matching wild fish, became bolder, fed faster, and drifted away from their schools, all behaviours that make a small fish easier to eat. Andrew then goes back to DDT, when bald eagles fell to 417 nesting pairs in the lower 48 states before the 1972 US ban let them climb past 71,000 breeding pairs.
The recovery story continues at Lake 260. Once the hormone additions stopped, the minnows came back to pre-experiment levels within three years. Switzerland is now upgrading about 120 treatment plants with ozone or activated carbon to remove more than 80% of these micropollutants, paid for by a small annual fee per person. Andrew closes with the part you control today: take your leftover and expired medications back to a pharmacy.
Takeaways:
Your body doesn't use every bit of a pill, and what's left leaves in urine.
Most treatment plants remove solids and bacteria, and many drug compounds pass straight through.
At Lake 260, synthetic estrogen at about 5 to 6 nanograms per litre collapsed the fathead minnow population to about 1%.
Lake trout that ate those minnows declined too.
Oxazepam made perch bolder, faster feeders, and loners, raising their risk from predators.
Bald eagles went from 417 nesting pairs in 1963 to more than 71,000 breeding pairs after DDT was banned.
Lake 260's minnows recovered within three years once the hormone additions stopped.
Switzerland is adding ozone and activated carbon treatment to about 120 plants to remove more than 80% of micropollutants.
Ontario's free pharmacy return program collected more than 330,000 kg of medications in 2024.
Keep taking what your doctor prescribes, and return the leftovers to a pharmacy instead of flushing or trashing them.
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