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A Whale of a Baseline

By jjacquet on September 10, 2007.

The grey whale is always held up as an icon of success of the Endangered Species Act. While it's true that gray whale numbers have rebounded from near extinction to 22,000 whales today, a new study released today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the grey whale population before whaling was 96,000 animals, three to five times greater than it is today. What is the baseline for success?

It comes as no surprise Stanford University's Steve Palumbi is a co-author of this study, given his participation in the 2003 paper in Science that showed North Atlantic whale populations once included 240,000 humpback, 360,000 fin, and 265,000 minke whales. The estimates for fin and humpback whales were far greater than those previously calculated for pre-whaling populations and 6 to 20 times higher than present-day population estimates. In grey whales I hear echoes of the June post on the bald eagle de-listing: Bald Eagles: Sometimes a Bad Baseline Gets Better.

The paper released today also discusses the shifting waistlines of grey whales and how their shrunken stomachs are linked to climate change. Mark Powell has more on the grey whale famine at Blogfish.

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New study questions to what degree we should smile about the grey whale recovery.

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