Friday, November 6, 2009

Whales' Endangered Status in Danger

Every few years I get back up to Southeast Alaska on a seiner I fished on in my younger days. Last season we had a pod of 50 blues heading into the net, which we quickly avoided. The skipper said in 40 years, he'd never seen that many whales in one place. It truly was amazing.

I concur....

Whales' Endangered Status in Danger: "For the first time in a decade, the U.S. is reviewing the endangered status of the humpback whale, prompted by evidence that these acrobatic leviathans -- once hunted to near extinction -- appear to be thriving world-wide.

From fewer than 5,000 in the 1960s, humpbacks now number 60,000 or more. 'They appear to be coming back pretty strongly in most of the places we are studying,' says whale biologist Phillip Clapham at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle."

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