WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.980 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.980 --> 00:00:05.610 align:middle line:84% This is from an essay called "Surfaces, Depths, 00:00:05.610 --> 00:00:07.118 align:middle line:90% And Plenitude." 00:00:07.118 --> 00:00:08.910 align:middle line:84% And I'm just going to read this first part. 00:00:08.910 --> 00:00:11.250 align:middle line:84% And you'll see as I mentioned, krill. 00:00:11.250 --> 00:00:12.330 align:middle line:90% They look like shrimp. 00:00:12.330 --> 00:00:16.640 align:middle line:84% But they're even tinier than shrimp and hamburgers. 00:00:16.640 --> 00:00:20.460 align:middle line:84% But this is what I like about facts. 00:00:20.460 --> 00:00:22.410 align:middle line:90% The humpback whale travel-- 00:00:22.410 --> 00:00:24.610 align:middle line:84% the humpback whales, plural, sorry, 00:00:24.610 --> 00:00:28.350 align:middle line:84% travel over 5,000 miles toward Antarctica short summer 00:00:28.350 --> 00:00:33.270 align:middle line:84% in pursuit of a paradox, a tiny plenitude. 00:00:33.270 --> 00:00:34.750 align:middle line:90% They are hungry. 00:00:34.750 --> 00:00:36.300 align:middle line:90% They are huge. 00:00:36.300 --> 00:00:38.940 align:middle line:84% At 50 tons apiece, they consume more fish 00:00:38.940 --> 00:00:43.800 align:middle line:84% than all the teenagers and all of Utah must consume Big Macs. 00:00:43.800 --> 00:00:47.490 align:middle line:84% The food they're looking for are tiny fish called krill. 00:00:47.490 --> 00:00:50.250 align:middle line:84% Fortunately, even at these times of scarcity, 00:00:50.250 --> 00:00:52.710 align:middle line:90% there is still a lot of krill. 00:00:52.710 --> 00:00:58.110 align:middle line:84% The krill mass exceeds that of all human life, even the mass 00:00:58.110 --> 00:01:01.650 align:middle line:90% of all the Big Macs. 00:01:01.650 --> 00:01:04.170 align:middle line:84% Krill collection is an orchestration 00:01:04.170 --> 00:01:07.800 align:middle line:84% worthy of the kind they teach at Hamburger University, 00:01:07.800 --> 00:01:09.540 align:middle line:84% where would be McDonald's employees 00:01:09.540 --> 00:01:12.660 align:middle line:84% learn to work as cogs in machines. 00:01:12.660 --> 00:01:15.270 align:middle line:84% Like the combined effort of the drive-thru cashier, 00:01:15.270 --> 00:01:18.240 align:middle line:84% the guy in the grill, the woman with her hairnet on the fry 00:01:18.240 --> 00:01:21.960 align:middle line:84% basket, humpback whales use their individual jobs 00:01:21.960 --> 00:01:26.100 align:middle line:84% to create a perfect system together. 00:01:26.100 --> 00:01:30.480 align:middle line:84% One whale exhales to create a net made of oxygen bubbles 00:01:30.480 --> 00:01:32.370 align:middle line:90% to startle the krill. 00:01:32.370 --> 00:01:36.090 align:middle line:84% Another whale sings loudly to create confusion. 00:01:36.090 --> 00:01:39.390 align:middle line:84% Another whale herds the krill upward. 00:01:39.390 --> 00:01:43.080 align:middle line:84% All the whales blow together to make something researchers call 00:01:43.080 --> 00:01:45.180 align:middle line:90% a bubble net. 00:01:45.180 --> 00:01:49.050 align:middle line:84% Together, they package the krill into tightly wrapped fillets 00:01:49.050 --> 00:01:51.240 align:middle line:84% of fish, quarter pounders, and French fries. 00:01:51.240 --> 00:01:53.160 align:middle line:84% Once the krill are at the surface, 00:01:53.160 --> 00:01:54.870 align:middle line:84% the whales open their mouths wide 00:01:54.870 --> 00:01:57.540 align:middle line:84% and eat them like McDonald's employees 00:01:57.540 --> 00:02:00.600 align:middle line:84% eat French fries on their breaks. 00:02:00.600 --> 00:02:04.200 align:middle line:84% With no thought of the future, worrying about cholesterol 00:02:04.200 --> 00:02:08.370 align:middle line:84% is for old people, not McDonald's employees or whales. 00:02:08.370 --> 00:02:12.360 align:middle line:84% There are about 30,000 to 40,000 humpback whales 00:02:12.360 --> 00:02:14.830 align:middle line:90% left in the wild. 00:02:14.830 --> 00:02:16.140 align:middle line:90% Here's a map coming up. 00:02:16.140 --> 00:02:22.267 align:middle line:84% Each one eats nearly 1.5 tons, 3,500 pounds of krill per day. 00:02:22.267 --> 00:02:23.850 align:middle line:84% Sorry, I don't think I mentioned that. 00:02:23.850 --> 00:02:25.730 align:middle line:90% Meaning, humpback whales alone-- 00:02:25.730 --> 00:02:27.630 align:middle line:90% oh, I do clarify. 00:02:27.630 --> 00:02:31.980 align:middle line:84% Meaning humpback whales alone consume nearly 105 million 00:02:31.980 --> 00:02:35.430 align:middle line:90% pounds of krill per day. 00:02:35.430 --> 00:02:39.300 align:middle line:84% McDonald's sells 75 hamburgers every second, 00:02:39.300 --> 00:02:42.450 align:middle line:90% 680,000 hamburgers per day. 00:02:42.450 --> 00:02:46.740 align:middle line:84% Each hamburger patty is 1/8 of a pound, 00:02:46.740 --> 00:02:50.520 align:middle line:84% so they will sell two pounds of hunger every second. 00:02:50.520 --> 00:02:54.450 align:middle line:84% Of 10, apparently and I cannot see this font. 00:02:54.450 --> 00:02:57.940 align:middle line:84% They will sell 10 pounds of hamburger every second, 00:02:57.940 --> 00:03:00.600 align:middle line:84% which equals 864,000 pounds of hamburger a day, 00:03:00.600 --> 00:03:04.260 align:middle line:84% which comes from 5.5 million heads of cattle a year, 00:03:04.260 --> 00:03:08.250 align:middle line:84% just in the United States, just from McDonald's. 00:03:08.250 --> 00:03:10.110 align:middle line:84% Recently, scientists have discovered 00:03:10.110 --> 00:03:14.310 align:middle line:84% that whales help sequester carbon in the atmosphere, which 00:03:14.310 --> 00:03:17.820 align:middle line:84% is handy because beef, in the form of cows, add the gases 00:03:17.820 --> 00:03:20.940 align:middle line:90% that help create global warming. 00:03:20.940 --> 00:03:24.630 align:middle line:84% Ironic that this almost extinct but returning species 00:03:24.630 --> 00:03:29.160 align:middle line:84% is here to help us and our hamburger-loving ways. 00:03:29.160 --> 00:03:33.360 align:middle line:84% The whales, while coming back, aren't quite keeping up. 00:03:33.360 --> 00:03:37.530 align:middle line:84% Americans eat almost a ton of food per year, 00:03:37.530 --> 00:03:40.830 align:middle line:90% 185 pounds of that are meat. 00:03:40.830 --> 00:03:46.830 align:middle line:84% That's 600 billion pounds of food eaten by Americans. 00:03:46.830 --> 00:03:50.160 align:middle line:84% Whales may provide an antidote to beef eating at McDonald's, 00:03:50.160 --> 00:03:51.870 align:middle line:84% but they have a lot of recovering 00:03:51.870 --> 00:03:53.970 align:middle line:84% to do in their own numbers before they 00:03:53.970 --> 00:03:58.220 align:middle line:84% can compete with the appetite of hungry Americans. 00:03:58.220 --> 00:03:59.000 align:middle line:90%