Humpback Whale Recovery

Time has a story about the recovery of the Humpback Whale. Once as low as 1,500, the population has rebounded to approximately 20,000. The major factor in this recovery was the 1982 moratorium on commercial whaling. But other factors such as altering shipping routes and protection of feeding sites such as Stellwagen Bank must have had an impact as well. Also, the explosion of public interest in whale watching has increased public awareness of whales and other sea life. Plus, these whale watching boats have provided a means for organizations such as the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies to monitor the population and identify individual whales that have become tangled in fishing lines. To me, this news proves that large, slowly reproducing animal species can be saved from extinction.