Dr Olaf Meynecke
speaker
16 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 1 Jul
Dr Olaf Meynecke’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
More or Less · Examining the numbers behind Andy Burnham’s ‘Manchester Miracle’ · 1 Jul 2026
podcast
There's this complexity of behaviour and the difficulty in predicting their behaviour and I guess that makes it really interesting.
Plus working in an extremely challenging environment, the ocean.
So that's based on calculations on phytoplankton, because the other components are quite small.
You know, like the body mass, if we compare that to species like copepods, like these small crustaceans, it's insignificant.
The point is that the phytoplankton is the major driver.
And we've seen that there is large variation between species.
So not every whale poos the same poo.
And they feed on different prey and that influences obviously what comes out.
And the phytoplankton is fueled by certain trace elements such as iron.
And we found that there is differences in iron content between species.
Only about 1% of the phytoplankton, which is the primary producer, and they are the ones who actually capture the carbon from the atmosphere, only 1% of them are sinking to the bottom of the ocean and will be basically sealed up
in that environment in the ocean, on the bottom of the ocean.
Most of it is recycled and circulates at the top of the ocean.
And then when we calculate what whales would contribute, of course, that is a very small amount.
And unfortunately, I mean, I would love that if whales could be the solution to our problems.
They are probably in other ways, but not for the carbon sequestration.
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