The biggest whales can eat the equivalent of 80,000 Big Macs in one day

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A humpback whale feeds off the coast of California.





John Durban/



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John Durban/





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A minke whale tagged by the research team swims off the coast of Antarctica in 2019.





Ari Friedlaender /



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Ari Friedlaender /





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Scientists investigate a humpback whale by boat and by drone in the surface waters near the West Antarctic Peninsula.





Duke University Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing



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Duke University Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing




Scientists investigate a humpback whale by boat and by drone in the surface waters near the West Antarctic Peninsula.


Duke University Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing

Such experiments can be controversial, he says, but «once people start understanding that the whales themselves were doing iron fertilization and that we would be just mimicking the whales, I am hoping that they would come around.»

Maldonado is against this idea, and says the disappearance of krill could be due to changes in water temperature or ocean acidification.


An iron fertilization test in the ocean would be complicated and could potentially have unintended consequences if it wasn’t done well, says Asha de Vos, a marine biologist and founding executive director of the conservation research group Oceanswell in Sri Lanka.

«I would be cautious,» she says, noting that whales could be helped in other ways, like protecting them from ship strikes or net entanglements. «We need to start tackling those issues as well and not just look for one quick fix.»

• gray whales


• ocean ecosystem


• marine biology


• krill


• whales