Whale Food Chain

The whale food chain is different for baleen whales than it is for toothed whales.

Plankton Such as Green Algae and Crustaceans
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                       The food chain for toothed whales is pretty much the same as for dolphins, since olphins are a kind of toothed whale.

can look like this:

Plankton eats the bodies of dead animals in the ocean.
Krill - small, shrimplike animals - eat plankton

Squid and small fish eat krill.

Large squid and fish eat small squid and fish.
Toothed whales eat the fish and squid, and they also take crustacians and octopus.
The largest toothed whales which are killer Killer whales eat fish and some of them eat small marine mammals and sometimes even sharks and dolphins.Their diet varies between groups.

The Problem-
  • Unfortunately,  if the smallest of prey creatures is exposed to even low level toxins from pollution of the water, it moves up the food chain and becomes concentrated in the tissues of the larger predators like marine mammals. This is called "food chain magnification."
  •  Planktonic organisms and nektonic animals, (small creatures like krill), both range over great expanses. Both carry heavy metals, pesticides, sometimes even radiation and disease-causing organisms through all of the oceans on earth. More and more marine mammals are being poisoned by contamination of our oceans.
What can we do about it?
Visit my Save the Whales page to find out!

Mixed Plankton, Including Pyrocystis
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Baleen Whales don't have the some problem with "food chain magnification."
This is due to the fact that the large baleen whales that filter food with their baleens, take prey from very low levels in the food web.

The advantage of that is that they don't geta lot of poisons built up in their bodies as do the animals up on the top of the web.

Large baleen whales eat animals on the first, second and third level:

eat dead animals.
eat plankton.

eat krill.

Baleen whales eat mainly krill and plankton, but also eat small fish.

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