Antarctica Is Seeing Huge Numbers Of Fin Whales For The First Time In Decades

Like many animals around the world, fin whales were hunted until they were on the brink of extinction. In 1976, however, hunting was restricted near their feeding grounds in Antarctica, and it seems to be paying off.

Recently, fin whales were seen feeding in mass numbers in the waters off of Antarctica, which is the first time this has happened in some 45 years.

Videos were taken of numerous blowholes from those whales as they were feeding in the area around Elephant Island.

This isn’t only good news for the whales, it is good news for all of us, as we rely on the ecosystem to thrive around Antarctica in some way or another. Some of the benefits of the whale population recovery include greater populations of krill and phytoplankton, which form the base of many aquatic food webs.

The fact that they were seen in such large numbers was surprising because they had basically stopped coming to those feeding regions by the time hunting was restricted in 1976, according to a paper published about their return.

Much of that hunting took place around Antarctica in their feeding grounds, as they are only second to the blue whale in size and they were sought after for the resources they offered.

Individual whales and groups were seen in abundance during expeditions in 2018 and 2019. During those expeditions, they searched over 2000 miles, recording some 100 groups of fin whales of up to four individuals and eight large groups of up to 150 whales. Previously, the maximum seen was only 13.

They extrapolated from the information they had due to those surveys and estimate that some 7,909 fin whales are now alive and doing well in that area. This is three times higher than the fin whale population off the coast of Southern California.

The area where more fin whales were seen was around Elephant Island, as over 3,600 individual whales were thought to exist. That is approximately 0.21 whales for every square kilometer.

You can read to full results of the population survey here.