On the Newsport on Monday we ran an article titled "Feral animals create CO2 cloud" about the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from animals who aren't even supposed to be here - camels, buffalo etc.

By culling these pests there are millions of tonnes of methane emissions to be saved, along with our natural environment.

But it turns out that not all poo is on the nose. According to Australian biologists, sperm whale poo is the giver of life to phytoplankton, the marine plants that suck up CO2.

There are around 12,000 sperm whales in the Southern Ocean absorbing a total of 400,000 tonnes of carbon each year.

"They eat their diet, mainly squid, in the deep ocean, and defecate in the upper waters where phytoplankton can grow, having access to sunlight," said marine biologist Trish Lavery from Flinders University, who led the study into whale poo.

So, the more sperm whales the Japanese fishing industry leave behind, the more sperm whale poo will be produced, the more phytoplankton can eat for breakfast, the less CO2 will enter our atmosphere.

This is a very serious issue, nature is obviously designed to balance things out one way or another, and will eventually do so at our cost if current predictions of climate change are accurate. Protecting fragile ecosystems and biodiversity can only be a good thing as there is still plenty left to learn about our place in the world.

Editors Comments: Obvious conclusion, stop the whaling and let nature correct this imbalance.