Kill Krill Volume 1

Yes I know this blog entry was supposed to be titled "Fun With Krill" but on reflection nobody has fun with krill.  Not even krill has fun with krill.  A krill's life cycle consists of birth, swim, reproduce, get eaten.  All of this happens underwater.  Cold water.

Krill oil is very big just at the moment which is rather ironic because krill themselves are extremely small.  We seem to regard pretty much anything that comes out of the sea as something we can get some sort of oil from.  We started out with whales, moved on to fish and now we're at krill.  Infomercials touting the benefits of plankton oil are probably already in production.

Krill are what nature calls a success story which is to say that so far their ability to reproduce has outstripped the ability of everything else to kill them.  This achievement becomes all the more impressive when you consider that almost everything that swims, floats or even holidays near the coast are trying to kill them.  Krill are very close to the bottom of the food chain (although even krill can still look down on lowly plankton) which means that if krill ever get wiped out then there will be a mass extinction event all the way up to whales.  Fortunately a maniacal breeding cycle means that the krill are so far holding their own.  Not even the attention of Bear Grylls has managed to appreciably reduce their numbers.  Even more surprisingly us humans have put a limit on the amount of krill we haul out of the ocean to maintain the supply.  Honesty compels me to admit that we simply do not want that much krill.

The amount of krill we can kill each year is approximately half a million tonnes worth.  We actually only take about a hundred thousand.  Each krill weighs approximately two grams fully grown so we're talking a lot of krill and this level is apparently sustainable.  Fortunately there's a bit of slack we can take up.  Whales, seals and other fish all tuck into krill and they don't have any limits on the amount they can harvest but over the years we've managed to impose informal limits by killing most of them.  Krill must be about the only animals that view the arrival of a Japanese whaling fleet with unalloyed delight.  Every scientifically harvested whale is a whole mass of krill that get to live a little longer.  And since their life span is two years at the most the significant word there is "little".

I know what you're thinking, with a life span of just a couple of years does it really matter if a whale cuts you off before you reach your prime?  I'm sure the krill don't see it that way, in fact the whales and seals et al are probably lucky that krill aren't a little more proactive.  If I were the krill I would be actively guiding whaling vessels into Antarctic waters and possibly doing a little dance around the more harpoonable specimens.

Of course the Japanese also fish for krill but not presumably from the same vessels.  After all it would be rather difficult to harpoon something that's only about three centimetres long.  There is a hint of danger on the krill's horizon though.  I mentioned it earlier.  Krill oil!  Apparently krill oil is really good at doing what we thought fish oil was really good at doing.  I'm not sure what that is but the number of television commercials dedicated to it means it must be good.  No doubt the fish a heaving a sigh of relief now that their oil is just so five minutes ago and all they have to worry about is us ripping them out of the sea and eating them.  We don't eat krill but we do grind it up and feed it to animals so I guess krill are now supporting two separate foodchains.

That's a pretty impressive achievement for something as apparently insignificant as krill, all we need now is to discover that they cure cancer.  We'll probably discover that round about the time we do manage to drive them to extinction.  We will also have driven everything that eats them to extinction as well.  On the other hand plankton (which is what krill eats) will be erecting statues to us.  Swings and roundabouts.