Pacific Views

Are Historical Whale Population Estimates Low?

Scientific American talks about the genetic analysis that's leading some researchers to think that previous population estimates for whales may have been extremely low:

Whales can be difficult creatures to track. To determine how many of the animals lived in the ocean before commercial whaling brought the population to the brink of extinction, conservationists rely on hunting logbooks dating from as far back as the 17th century. This method has produced estimates of approximately 20,000 humpback and between 30,000 to 50,000 fin whales in the North Atlantic. A report published today in the journal Science, however, indicates that there may have once been 10 times this number of leviathans. ...

More from the Washington Post:

...The findings could play an important role in decisions of the International Whaling Commission, the 51-nation convention that imposed an international moratorium on whaling in 1985 to allow stocks to rebuild after the decimation of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The commission has agreed that whaling should not be allowed until stocks reach at least 54 percent of historic levels. Under this stipulation, the current North Atlantic humpback population is about 50 percent of historical-statistical estimates, while fins, at 56,000 and minkes at 149,000 have already exceeded the threshold.

But under the new genetics-based estimates, only the minkes are close to 54 percent. "One of the things that the data tell us is that we have a long way to go for recovery," Roman said in a telephone interview. "Things were vastly different in the relatively recent past. How do we get to that restoration? I don't know."

It's going to be a while before the study is verified, but these are interesting results.