

California blue whales, once nearly extinct, are back at historic levels - prostoalex
http://www.vox.com/2014/9/8/6122867/we-nearly-hunted-blue-whales-to-extinction-now-theyre-bouncing-back

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winter_blue
If they were hunted to nearly extinction and have recovered now, we're going
to be seeing some of the founder effect:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder_effect)

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justizin
Shush people will just use this as an excuse to roll coal!

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awt
I saw some on an excursion to the Farallones. Just briefly saw their backs as
they came up for air, nothing spectacular, but well worth the cold and sea
sickness.

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lifeisstillgood
I would be suspicious of any claims to returning to "historic levels" \-
hunting whales got serious in the 1800s, lighting and powering the industrial
revolution, long before we counted the numbers sensibly.

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ceejayoz
The article addresses this.

> Prior to the late 19th century, blue whales were simply too big and powerful
> to pursue... Roughly 380,000 blue whales had been killed in all, and the
> species was at 0.2 percent of its initial numbers.

Given that they couldn't be hunted until fairly recently, and having a decent
idea of how many got killed, it should be possible to get very reasonable
estimates of pre-hunt populations.

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vanderZwan
> Among other things, they calculated that there are currently about 2,200
> California blue whales today — and _that that 's about 97 percent of the
> carrying capacity for the eastern North Pacific_. It's a full recovery.

I wonder if that carrying capacity isn't lowered by years of human fishing as
well - although based on the rest of the article it seems likely that the
researchers did take the full historical context into account.

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jmatthew3
Well I'm glad we all learned a lesson from Star Trek IV.

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robterrell
Oh god I'm going to be that guy, but, those were humpback whales.

