The Plastic - Climate Connection Runs Through Whales

One of the most memorable thrills of my lifetime — there have been too many to easily remember — was my first swim with Atlantic whale sharks off México, in the Straits of Cuba, in 2006. My guide on the boat deck motioned to me, treading water and scanning the horizon for any dorsal fins, to “dive, dive!” and I did, just in time to see a shark some 30 feet long, with an open mouth nearly 5 foot wide, converging directly on my position, at speed.

I dodged to my left as fast as I could, not hazarding the time it would take to bring my camera up and record the moment. By the time I positioned my small Canon point-and-shoot, the shark was past me, devouring plankton to the starboard of the boat. These giant sharks are herbivores, so he or she was probably trying to avoid me as much as I was trying to avoid him or her. This is the picture I took.

Whale sharks (Rhincodon typus), currently on the Red List of threatened species, first appear in the geological record along with Manta rays, at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary about 34 million years ago. That was when one of the largest extinctions of marine invertebrates and mammals in Europe and Asia, likely triggered by…