{"id":430,"date":"2014-09-09T20:18:58","date_gmt":"2014-09-10T04:18:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ijdesign.com\/blog\/?p=430"},"modified":"2014-09-09T20:19:56","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T04:19:56","slug":"blue-whales-of-california-are-back-to-historical-levels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ijdesign.com\/blog\/blue-whales-of-california-are-back-to-historical-levels\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Whales Of California Are Back To Historical Levels"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well here is some refreshing good environmental news, despite all the grumbling media stories going around these days \u2013 the blue whales that live off the coast of California are back to historical levels, with 2,200 whales today versus 750 in the 1930’s. Here’s the story from\u00a0neviewpoint.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Good<\/h1>\n

Blue Whales Of California Are Back To Historical Levels, Study Finds<\/h3>\n
\n

September 9, 2014 | By Deborah Netburn<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Good news, whale lovers: A new analysis suggests that there are as many blue whales living off the coast of California as there were before humans started hunting them to near extinction\u00a0110 years ago.<\/p>\n

Today, there are roughly 2,200 blue whales who range from Mexico in the south to Alaska in the north. In the 1930s, that number was closer to 750.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, this is a great conservation success story,\u201d said Cole Monnahan, a doctoral student in ecology and resource management at the University of Washington. \u201cWe caught way too many whales from this population, but when we left them alone, they recovered.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that is really good news,\u201d he added. \u201cThat it is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blue whales are the largest animals in the world. They can weigh up to 330,000 pounds and grow up to 110 feet in length.<\/p>\n

These giants of the ocean are found throughout the world, but for this study, published Friday in Marine Mammal Science, the researchers looked at the relatively small population of whales that live in the eastern North Pacific.<\/p>\n

During the height of whaling in the 1930s, this population dropped to between 500 and 1,000 individuals, the researchers said. After whaling became illegal in the 1970s, however, their numbers began to bounce back. By the 1990s, the population had grown to about 2,200, according to research from NOAA scientists, and that is currently where it is today.<\/p>\n

To see whether this number represented a complete rebound, the team looked at previously published data of how many California blue whales there are currently, the number of California blue whales that were reportedly killed by whalers in the 20th century (3,400) and how many whales are killed each year by ship strikes (probably around 11).<\/p>\n

After feeding all this information into a mathematical model, they concluded that the number of California blue whales swimming around today is 97 percent as large it was before 1905.<\/p>\n

This analysis could explain why the number of California blue whales leveled off in the early 1990s.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore this study some people thought that number should be going up, but if there were about 2,200 whales to begin with, than that is what the environment can support,\u201d Monnahan said.<\/p>\n

The analysis also suggests that even if ship strikes increased eleven-fold, the California blue whale population would still not be significantly depleted.<\/p>\n

Not everyone is convinced its time to jump for joy, however.<\/p>\n

Jay Barlow, a NOAA research scientist who studies blue whales, said that to accept the authors\u2019 good news conclusion, you also have to accept that there truly were only 3,400 California blue whales killed in the 20th century, because that was an important data point for the analysis.<\/p>\n

If more whales were killed during that time, and perhaps not recorded, that would suggest the population may originally have been bigger.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt all depends on whether you believe the whaling statistics or not,\u201d Barlow said. \u201cAnd my guess is there are more underestimates of whales killed, rather than overestimates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if the data is right however, that would make the California blue whales the only blue whale population in the world to have completely rebounded. In other parts of the world, the situation is much more depressing.<\/p>\n

Trevor Branch, an assistant professor of aquatic and fishery sciences and the senior author of the paper, said the blue whale populations in Chile are at 10 percent to 20 percent of historical levels. In Antarctica, where there used to be 240,000 blue whales, the population is at 1 percent of what it once was \u2014 about the size of the California population.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are increasing as fast as they can \u2014 about 10 percent a year,\u201d Branch said, \u201cbut at that rate their numbers will double every 10\u00a0 or 11 years or so, so you can see how it will take many more decades before they get back to where they were.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a92014 Los Angeles Times<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well here is some refreshing good environmental news, despite all the grumbling media stories going around these days \u2013 the blue whales that live off the coast of California are back to historical levels, with 2,200 whales today versus 750 in the 1930’s. Here’s the story from\u00a0neviewpoint.com: Blue Whales Of California Are Back To Historical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":600,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ijdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ijdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ijdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ijdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ijdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ijdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":435,"href":"https:\/\/www.ijdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions\/435"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ijdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ijdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ijdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ijdesign.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}