The ocean covers 71 percent of the Earth's surface and contains 97 percent of the planet's water

The ocean and lakes play an integral role in many of the Earth's systems including climate and weather.

NOAA’s mission is to serve the nation’s need for oceanic and atmospheric information, but doing so also means helping to ensure that the public understands how NOAA science impacts their daily lives and future prosperity

Dolphin meat is often mislabeled as whale meat in violation of Japanese food safety laws. The change of the meat sold in stores from baleen whales, which are low trophic feeders, to dolphins which are high trophic feeders, subjects those eating this meat to high levels of heavy metals, such as mercury, and organochlorines like PCBs, dioxins and benzenes.

Mercury is not the only toxin found in dolphin and whale meat. Whale and dolphin meat can be highly contaminated by both heavy metals and PBOPs (persistent bioaccumulative organic pollutants) such as PCBs, and pesticides such as DDT and chlordanes.

In a study presented to International Whaling Commission (IWC) conference in Australia, Japanese researchers reported finding dioxin levels up to 172 times the tolerable daily intake in marketed whale meat.

The iron is a terrific food for phytoplankton - marine plants that live near the ocean surface and which suck up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis.

As a result of faecal fertilisation, the whales remove 400,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, twice as much as the 200,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide they contribute through respiration

By way of comparison, 200,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide is equal to the emissions of almost 40,000 cars, according to an equation on the website of the US Environmental Protection Agency

Whales have an important role to play in nutrient cycling. Their poo, for example, makes organic carbon more accessible to smaller organisms. Even a dead whale carcass is important in carbon cycling, particularly the export of carbon to the deep sea. The falling carcass (whale fall) brings carbon acquired at the surface (usually in the form of plankton) to the sea floor as the whale's body (a large carbon reservoir) sinks. The larger the whale, the more carbon-filled tissues it has, meaning that larger whales export more carbon.

As it falls to the sea floor, a whale carcass can provide food for hundreds of organisms as they flock to a food source that can keep them going in an environment usually devoid of such bountiful food resources.

We know, from Japanese scientists, that dolphins and small whales are heavily contaminated by mercury.  No one should be eating meat from dolphins and small whales.

Yet the Japanese government, fully aware of the dangers of mercury contamination, ignores this problem and allows mercury-poisoned dolphin and whale meat to be sold in markets.  Japanese consumers are exposed to danger but not warned.

Mercury is the second most toxic poison in the world, second only to plutonium.  Mercury attacks the brain and the nervous system, causing horrible damage to eyesight, hearing, and motor-skills, as well as interfering with memory and thought processes leading to dementia.