At the end of the day, we are just humans living on a planet. 8.2 billion of us and counting. I don’t care about your money, your political views or your religion. I will always treat you as a human being. A human being I share a habitat with. We also share this habitat with penguins, dolphins, elephants, crickets and a lot of other creatures. We as humans think of ourselves as superior species compared to those creatures. We think that we are not part of the food chain. (Yeah, tell that to anyone who had a close encounter with an apex predator recently.) We think that we can kill, eat, and use any other species on this mudball as we wish. That is – of course – an illusion and an arrogant one too.

You might have heard before, that when the last whale dies, we as humans go extinct too. You might have laughed a bit too, that “yeah, right all 8 billion of us would die because of whales haha”. It is not an urban legend.

Recently I had the privilege to see humpback whales from very close in the North Atlantic. They are truly amazing. These majestic gentle giants were once on the brink of extinction, now they are thriving again. Why? Because humans decided to let them be. But why the change of heart humans? Well, humans realized that more than 50 percent of the air we breathe is because of the existence of whales. Whales have a symbiotic relationship with sea algae known as phytoplankton. Through photosynthesis, phytoplankton consume carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and release oxygen as a waste product. So what do these planktons need to thrive? Whale poo, which is rich in nutrients and iron, just like your morning granola. These enormous creatures give us more than they take: they fertilize our oceans and seas, accumulate carbon and keep us breathing.

So let’s get back to the part when humans decided to let them be… Well, that aged quickly, right? Whales can live happily ever after without humans, but can we live without them? So who is dependent on who? Who is superior now? Who couldn’t breathe without whale poo? We are very lucky that a whale would never ask that question. All of us, 8 billion humans are co-habiting a planet with them, which they make livable for us. So next time you see a banner with the text “Save the Whales!”, replace the whales with humans, because without them billions of us would die in no time. 

We are numbers, big numbers now, we put the numbers on the board as well, let that be stock market bull runs or CO2 emissions, but never forget that we are whales too!