Humpbacks still need protection

40 years after being hunted to near extinction and their slaughter banned worldwide, humpback whales in the North Pacific have strengthened in numbers. However, the encouraging data collected in the most comprehensive survey of large whale populations, could lead to removal of strict protections for these marine mammals.

Even dropping the whales' status from endangered to threatened could reverse the gains the marine mammals have achieved. From just 1,500 in 1966 when international hunting was banned, the number of humpbacks grew to an estimated 18,000 to 20,000 in 2004-2006. Half of them, the healthiest population, migrate between Hawaii and Alaska, but groups in the West Pacific and elsewhere haven't fared as well, perhaps because they were so depleted by whalers who found humpbacks easy prey because they feed and breed close to shorelines. Also this particular species of whale do not reach sexual maturity until approx 10 years old and females only give birth to single calves every two to three years.

The continuing survey involves more than 400 researchers from 10 countries studying regions stretching from North Pacific to Hawaii to Mexico, Central America, the U.S. West Coast and Alaska. In part, its intent is to review the humpback's status as an endangered species and to see if it should be "downlisted" to threatened. Whether the current population is stable enough to resume hunting would be a difficult calculation, but in comparison to estimates of the whale's original numbers of hundreds of thousands, 20,000 humpbacks seem too few to take a gamble.