The largest mammal on the Earth is making its come back from the brink of extinction. As per the data collected by the scientists the number of blue whales in the Southern Hemisphere has increased many folds. Due do the unabated hunting blue whale population was shrunk to just a couple of hundreds but now there are suppose to be about 4,500 blue whales in the blue waters of the oceans.
These findings were announced at the International Whaling Commission’s (IWC) annual meeting.
The IWC’s head of science Greg Donovan said:
Blue whales have now been increasing by about 7-8% per year for the last 10 years at least, for which we have good data. Numbers of other large species such as fin whales and humpbacks are also rising in many parts of the world.
The mammoth blue whales can grow as long as 30m in length and weigh up to 190 tonnes. There was a time when more than two lakh blue whales were present in the oceans. But once the industrial-scale commercial hunting began this mammal population shrunk to dismally low level. In the year 1930-1931 as many as 30,000 blue whales were killed to procure the precious oil from its blubber. However, in the 1960s the need to protect blue whale from extinction was felt and a ban on hunting came to force.
The credit of this increase in blue whales’ number goes to all those people, who raised their voices against the blatant slaughter of the magnificent mammal.
Source: BBC