Feeding Banks

Whale Appetites

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 ~ The blue whale is the largest animal on the planet, and it feeds almost exclusively on one of the smallest—krill or plankton, tiny shrimp-like creatures called euphausiids. Each may eat up to 4 tons a day. Their ability to eat enough depends in part on two things: lots of krill in the ocean, and dense concentrations of them that make the feeding process practical in time and energy expended.

Lately, I've been pondering the similarities of blue whales and large banks.

Both:

• Are incomprehensibly large
• Can almost entirely ignore everything and everyone else in their environment
• Prey on very small creatures a fraction of their size and power
• Consume voraciously or die
• Focus on dense, numerous populations
• Don't differentiate or consider individuals at all
• Have few real predators when healthy
• Are somewhat wary of a very small handful of people who deliberately set out to hunt and kill them
• Have many, many more people who are deeply committed to defending them
• Are among the loudest entities on the planet

Blue whales are also an endangered species. As more and more of us small fry abandon them for credit unions, will the lack of easy prey make the large banks endangered too?