Humpback Whales Return From The Brink of Extinction: After their population was almost wiped out, a significant amount of Western South Atlantic (WSA) humpback whales appeared out of nowhere off the coast of South America.
Around the world, there are 16 populations of humpbacks, of which four are considered endangered and one is threatened. Over hundreds of years, hunters killed around 300,000 humpback whales worldwide. In the 1900s, the WSA humpbacks were quickly depleted, with about 25,000 whales hunted in just 22 years. By the mid-1950s, only 450 humpbacks remained.
In the 1960s, protections were put into place to help prevent the species from dying out. For almost five decades, the whales didn’t seem to be rebounding until recently. A new study finds that the population is now up to around 25,000 whales, which is about 93% of their population size before hunting began in the 1700s.
