Humpback whales, like other large whales, are considered “gardeners of the sea”. This is because, with their large volume of feces and urine, whales fertilize the surface layers of the oceans, increasing the productivity of phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain. This is essential for all marine biodiversity and also for fishing, which depends on good productivity at the base of the food chain to have good results.

Whales are also extremely important to the ocean's carbon cycle, helping to reduce climate change through (a) carbon storage in their large bodies; (b) depositing large volumes of carbon in the ocean floor, when carbon dies which will take hundreds or thousands of years to return to the atmosphere; and (c) the aforementioned fertilization of phytoplankton, which also absorbs carbon.

It is worth remembering, by the way, that dead whales are also very important for ocean ecosystems, feeding other animals such as sharks and birds when carcasses float, in the first days of death, and providing deep sea bottom communities with scarce food. and fundamental for these poorly studied ecosystems to continue to exist.

Finally, whales provide direct services to generate employment and income through Observation Tourism, which today is already an important economic alternative around the world - and also in Brazil - for hundreds of coastal communities.

The Humpback Whale Project, in partnership with the Great Whale Conservancy and economists from Duke University and the International Monetary Fund, is seeking to better understand the ecosystem services provided by Brazilian whales and their direct value to our economy. Preliminary studies released in 2019 indicate that these services, which stem from Brazil's State policy to fully protect whales in our waters, are worth an impressive $ 82 billion!