The Northern right whale was hunted to the brink of extinction – with less than 500 left when hunting ended. To put this in perspective, only 300 Southern right whales were left when hunting stopped, it is thought that there are now 3000-4000 Southern right whales.
Now, it is true that historically the Southern right whale is thought to have numbered as 55,000-70,000 individuals, suggesting that the current population is 3-5% of historic numbers.
However, the current estimate for the Northern right whale population is 386. While has the Southern right whale population grown over 1000%, and in the same time, the northern right whale population declined?
What is different?
It appears from new research, it is entanglement! Whales are some of the most efficient shapes for their size. This allows them to cruise through the oceans at surprisingly rapid rates, with the blue whale being able to hit speeds of 30 miles an hour. Whales are spending huge amounts of energy getting free of entanglement’s, and it is thought that this amount of energy could be comparable to the amount of energy it takes to raise young.
Is entanglements using so much of the whales energy that there isn’t enough left to allow for rearing young?
Whales are important parts of the worlds ecosystems – indeed, while much of our perceived benefits come from tourism (which employs over 13,000 people worldwide) there are many other benefits. One of the most important (for us) is the fact that the whales can sequester vast amounts of carbon. It is thought that whales sequester around 33 tonnes of carbon over their lifetime. Even working on the current estimated number of whales (estimates vary wildly) of 1.5 million, that is a huge amount of carbon and an important part of the worlds natural carbon sink.
What are we doing?
Rules are being made, to reduce rope strength, allowing them to break easier when the whales are entangled, as well as imposing season closures and implementing rules to avoid boat strikes.
Whales are always amazing for most people to see, and their existence makes life better, quite apart from the many things that they contribute to the worlds environment, Most of the changes, have long term costs of little to nothing, so this seems a no-brainer.