Whales are an importent part of the food chain, they are at/near the top of it. If they all go extinct, there will be a population explosion of the food they eat (ie plankton, small fish, etc), which would lead to them consuming all the of their food sources and then the whole chain collapses.
On a related subject and it serves as a good example, in an older topic someone said they were having a major deer problem in their area. Now...wolves and a couple of other preditors normally keep the deer population in check. But guess what? Humans drove out/killed all the deers natural preditors and the deers population exploded.
Due to their ignorence, humans now have to cull the deer to keep them from 'eating' them out of house and home themselves. If they hadn't gotten rid of the preditors to begin with...they wouldn't have to!
Same thing will happen if the whales go extinct....
And remember...whales reproduce at a much slower rate then fish, lobster and other aquatic life. (same with Sharks BTW) They can't recover their numbers as fast...
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