For the first time in a decade, the U.S. is reviewing the endangered status of the humpback whale, prompted by evidence that these acrobatic leviathans — once hunted to near extinction — appear to be thriving world-wide.
From fewer than 5,000 in the 1960s, humpbacks now number 60,000 or more. "They appear to be coming back pretty strongly in most of the places we are studying," says whale biologist Phillip Clapham at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle.
Under the federal review, though, more than their growing numbers will determine the regulatory fate of these immense marine mammals. It also will hinge on blubber biopsies and maternal DNA from the most intensive studies ever conducted of a marine mammal species, encompassing humpback whale herds world-wide.
Last month, an international research team led by the Wildlife Conservation Society reported in the journal PLoS One its findings from a 15-year survey of 1,527 humpbacks in the Southern Hemisphere. Other studies involving thousands of humpbacks in the northern Pacific and the North Atlantic are nearing completion, as is a new estimate of pre-whaling populations used to gauge the pace of the species’ recovery.