On Peter Sinclair's blog, I found an article containing a video that describes how whales are the COOLEST ANIMALS EVER (okay, that wasn't the topic, but I think the video justifies this claim). Whales change the climate. Whale hunting is an industry that has moved beyond tradition and into the commercial realm, and thanks to groups like Sea Shepherds has been combated. But the killing of whales has brought about a number of things, including a decline in plankton populations. One would think they would flourish now that their predators, the great whales, are on the decline--but the video explains the truth of the matter.
Whales often feed at extreme depths out of the light, and then travel back up to the photic zone where the light reaches through the water. Here, they release fecal plumes that contain iron and nitrogen, which are scare in the surface waters. Simultaneously, as the whales travel up to the photic zone, they push up the plankton that sits in deeper in the water, which then mingles in the surface waters. The fecal plumes act as fertilizers in this surface zone where photosynthesis takes place, allowing the plankton both nutrients and space to reproduce better, before sinking back down in the water column. Without this aid from the whales, their numbers have decreased.
Here's where climate change gets mixed in: the plankton also absorb carbon dioxide, so now that their numbers are lower and they don't reach the surface to absorb, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere cannot decrease with this help. The video postulates that during the peak of the great whales' existence, they must have helped relocate tens of millions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere. It's time to save the whales, folks. They're too awesome to allow their senseless deaths to continue.
Source: http://climatecrocks.com/2015/01/12/how-whales-change-climate/
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