Some might hear a great deal about the role (as far as perceivable correlations go) plants play in sequestering carbon and keeping it out of the atmosphere. Through photosynthesis, they take in carbon and produce oxygen. Each of these things is crucial in one way or another for human flourishing. Because of its direct relationship with human survival and quality of life, and because even being a lesser creation of God than humankind would not mean the environment can legitimately be trampled upon (Genesis 1:31), vast human emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide would need to be counteracted by carbon sinks for the sake of maximizing our wellbeing and that of other creatures. Too much carbon dioxide from vehicular travel or other modern human activities, and the world artificially overheats to the point of endangering the living things therein.
For all the more open attention sometimes given to trees or wetlands for their capacity to withdraw carbon from the atmosphere, blue carbon, that which is handled by the ocean/coast, would be vital. From phytoplankton to kelp, there is photosynthesis occurring in the water as with on land, which performs the same basic carbon-storing and oxygen-releasing activities as trees. The animal life also has various ways of helping. Fish waste (the feces) brings carbon to the depths of the ocean, while creatures like sharks store this element in their bodies. A dead shark, moreover, would bring its carbon away from the surface of the ocean as it falls and thus keeps it away from the atmosphere. Overfishing diminishes the effectiveness of such processes because there are fewer fish kept in the water and more consumed where their carbon is now directed to the atmosphere.
The massive bodies and long lives of whales, though, make them much better carbon sequesters than trees or many other oceanic animals like sharks, which remove less carbon due to factors like size or general lifespan. Allowing whales to recover after the 1900s helps improve this sequestration. Beyond simply absorbing carbon during life, whales even contribute to the counteracting of carbon dioxide by promoting phytoplankton. Their waste provides these microscopic plants with iron, which nourishes these photosynthetic organisms so that they can also absorb more carbon (and release more oxygen). Areas like the Southern Ocean are particularly benefitted by this since iron is otherwise not quite so accessible there.
Upon a whale's death following a perhaps century-long life, gravity pulls the carcass downward just like with that of a shark. The descent of a whale corpse brings the accumulated carbon potentially all the way down to the ocean floor and, again, far from the atmosphere where it would participate in the greenhouse effect. The carbon can be distributed among the deep sea sediment and rest here relatively undisturbed for prolonged periods of time. In this way, in life and death, whales do much to remove carbon from where it is most dangerous at certain high concentrations--the right amount in the right place heats the planet, after all.
While land-based creatures release carbon when they die and decompose, a lifeless body with this element sinking to the bottom of the ocean redirects it to a much safer location. Like on land, the seas of the natural world already have ways to reduce or neutralize the danger of carbon dioxide. Presiding over the natural world with its chemical reactions, animal life, and food chains does not mean that humans have to be ruthless, apathetic, or intentionally damaging to the balance of activity that preserves life on both the seas and land. Developments like advanced weaponry are not the only relatively modern technologies that need to be used within specific limitations on the Biblical worldview. The way that people regard and harness the environment itself for business or other ventures, if they are Christians, reflects how much they actually care about divine creation.
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