Another Ecoloigcal Success Story: The Southern Right Whale

The eighteenth through the twentieth centuries were dark times in whale history. When whale oil was the currency of the western industrial world, many species of whale were hunted to local extinction; essentially, the species were hunted until the remaining adults simply didn’t know where their breeding rounds were anymore. A famous American example is the east coast island of Nantucket, whose population of right whales has only recently begun to recover from a centuries-long local extinction.

Dubbed the right whale because it was the “right” whale to kill, the right whales were an easy target due to their habits of breeding close to shore and general playfulness. They could be taken down in a longboat launched from shore and brought back in, floating, to the mainland to harvest their blubber. The southern right whales, which spawned in New Zealand, were driven to local extinction that was all but complete by the middle of the twentieth century.

But the more we research marine biology, the clearer it becomes that, given some time and some help, the ocean has a way of recovering from even our most complete efforts to destroy the life within it. A small number of southern right whales have once again moved back to their ancestral breeding ground off the coast of New Zealand and have begun to birth and raise their calves there.

One of the amazing things this demonstrates is that whales have the ability to maintain and pass down vital cultural information from mother to calf, in this case migration and breeding information. This implies that right whales maintain a cultural memory. In much the same way we (often unconsciously) teach our children to recognize and respect the most important aspects of our culture through our behavior, marine mammals also pass vital information to their calves by following the patterns they themselves were taught. When this species was hunted to local extinction, the remaining animals essentially “forgot” where they were born and how to return because they stopped migrating there. Now, it seems that the establishment of their breeding grounds as a protected area has brought them back.

Even though there are only a handful of animals returning this year, they expect the numbers to grow as the whales recognize the area as a safe place to give birth to and raise their young. This also benefits New Zealand tourism; right whales are playful and very visible, often leaping out of the water. If anything, this should serve as a positive message: ocean conservation works! Protected species do recover. However, steps do need to be taken in order to protect the animals that are being hunted to extinction. The recovery of humpback, right, and sperm whales has been slow but steady since the banning of whaling. Take action for your oceans; continue to support whale protection and ocean conservation legislation.

For more information or to read the complete report, check it out at sciencedaily.com.

If you’re interested in learning about the history of whaling in the United States, there is a fascinating book called In the Heart of the Sea: The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick. It’s primary focus is on the shipwreck that inspired the climax of Herman Mellville’s Moby Dick, (namely, a sperm whale ramming and sinking the boat) but there is a lot to learn from it about the culture of whaling in that time period.