Amazingly, blue whales have managed to bounce back from the brink of extinction, and it’s the news we all need to hear this Friday. There’s constant news coverage about the numbers of different species of animals rapidly declining, but this good news about blue whales comes as a breath of fresh air. The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has found an ‘unprecedented’ amount of the whales in South Georgia after their numbers had reduced by a drastic 97% in recent years. Whale project leader Dr Jennifer Jackson, a whale ecologist at BAS, said: After three years of surveys, we are thrilled to see so many whales visiting South Georgia to feed again. This is a place where both whaling and sealing were carried out extensively. It is clear that protection from whaling has worked, with humpback whales now seen at densities similar to those a century earlier, when whaling first began at South Georgia. Blue whales were savagely hunted for years for their blubber, baleen and meat, which saw 176,000 killed in just 60 years. In 1986, commercial whaling was banned by the International Whaling Commission (IWC), which has evidently helped the species grow in number. Only one blue whale […]
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