Near Brazil humpback whale population has grown from around 2,000 whales four decades ago to roughly 35,000 today

Good news! What about other whale populations or humpback whales in other oceans? If I remember correctly, other whale populations also have recovered in recent decades.

What about overpopulation?

"Commercial whaling was effectively banned globally on January 1, 1986" (Google search)

"The co-founder of The Humpback Whale Project, a Brazilian research and conservation nonprofit, estimates that the western South Atlantic humpback population has grown from around 2,000 whales four decades ago to roughly 35,000 today, approaching or possibly matching its estimated pre-commercial whaling abundance."

Doomslayer: Progress Roundup - by Malcolm Cochran

Sightings of humpback whales surge in Rio de Janeiro, fueling demand for whale-watching trips

Projeto Baleia Jubarte (The Humpback Whale Project) (Unfortunately, I could not find the news release on their website, which is odd)

A humpback whale breaches off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Tuesday, June 30, 2026.

Decoding sperm whale language - they use vowels like humans?

Amazing stuff! Whalers of the 19th century noticed that sperm whales were able evade being hunted by communicating to swim up wind so the sailors could not follow.

The video also points out that this latest study did not even yet use machine learning & AI to interpret the whale language.

Solitary humpback whales create and control sophisticated bubble nets to catch krill

Amazing stuff!

"Many animals use tools to help snag their supper, from rock-wielding sea otters to crocodiles that use sticks as bait to lure nest-building birds. But only a handful of species—including crows, chimpanzees, and orangutans—can make and modify tools the way we humans do. Now, thanks to new research, this elite club may have a new member: the humpback whale.

Scientists have known for a while that these strapping cetaceans use their blowholes to release rings of bubbles underwater, creating specialized “bubble-nets” to herd, stun, and catch krill close to the ocean’s surface. According to a new study, however, solitary humpbacks in southeast Alaska don’t just make nets—they also manipulate them in sophisticated ways.
“These whales skillfully blow bubbles in patterns that form nets with internal rings, actively controlling details like the number of rings, the size and depth of the net, and the spacing between bubbles,” ..."

From the abstract:

"Several animal species use tools for foraging; however, very few manufacture and/or modify those tools. Humpback whales, which manufacture bubble-net tools while foraging, are among these rare species. Using animal-borne tag and unoccupied aerial system technologies, we examine bubble-nets manufactured by solitary humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) in Southeast Alaska while feeding on krill. We demonstrate that the nets consist of internally tangential rings and suggest that whales actively control the number of rings in a net, net size and depth and the horizontal spacing between neighbouring bubbles. We argue that whales regulate these net structural elements to increase per-lunge prey intake by, on average, sevenfold. We measured breath rate and swimming and lunge kinematics to show that the resulting increase in prey density does not increase energetic expenditure. Our results provide a novel insight into how bubble-net tools manufactured by solitary foraging humpback whales act to increase foraging efficiency."

ScienceAdvisor

Humpbacks are among animals who manufacture and wield tools

Solitary humpback whales manufacture bubble-nets as tools to increase prey intake (open access)

Figure 1. Variables and data collected from UAS and tagging methodologies.

Sperm whale 'phonetic alphabet' of song discovered by scientists

Amazing stuff! What are they saying to each other?

Blue whales return to tropical haven by the Seychelles

Good news! This video is way too short! Shame on BBC!

Witness a humpback whale birth caught on camera in Hawaii

Amazing stuff! Watch e.g. how the behavior of several nearby male humpback whales changes instantly and dramatically when they realize the female is giving birth.

Sperm whales use distinct vocalizations to identify different whale clans, new research finds

Amazing stuff! Fascinating! I just blogged here about other recent whale song research!

"“They’re all kind of using the same language, but phrasing things slightly differently,” said Mauricio Cantor, assistant professor in OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute and a co-author on the study. Cantor is referring to something called “identity codas” — unique sequences of Morse code-like clicks that serve as symbolic social markers. ...
The researchers l... analyzed over 23,400 sperm whale codas recorded in 23 specific regions in the Pacific spanning from the Galapagos to Tonga, Japan, and Chile. The recordings came were gathered over a course of almost 40 years. ...
The codas are a tell-tale sign of culture, passed down from generation to generation through social learning. When they’re young, calves don’t know any specific codas but they learn them by mimicking the adults and then keep the codas consistent. ...
Whales use these codas differently in different situations. When they know they’re the only clan in a particular geographical area, they use the codas sparingly. But in a crowded area with multiple clans, where the whales don’t exactly know if the nearby whales are part of their clan, they use it more often to distinguish themselves. ..."

From the abstract:

"... Using acoustic data collected from 23 Pacific Ocean locations, we provide quantitative evidence that certain sperm whale acoustic signals exhibit spatial patterns consistent with a symbolic marker function. Culture segments sperm whale populations into behaviorally distinct clans, which are defined based on dialects of stereotyped click patterns (codas). We classified 23,429 codas into types using contaminated mixture models and hierarchically clustered coda repertoires into seven clans based on similarities in coda usage; then we evaluated whether coda usage varied with geographic distance within clans or with spatial overlap between clans. Similarities in within-clan usage of both “identity codas” (coda types diagnostic of clan identity) and “nonidentity codas” (coda types used by multiple clans) decrease as space between repertoire recording locations increases. However, between-clan similarity in identity, but not nonidentity, coda usage decreases as clan spatial overlap increases. This matches expectations if sympatry is related to a measurable pressure to diversify to make cultural divisions sharper, thereby providing evidence that identity codas function as symbolic markers of clan identity. Our study provides quantitative evidence of arbitrary traits, resembling human ethnic markers, conveying cultural identity outside of humans, and highlights remarkable similarities in the distributions of human ethnolinguistic groups and sperm whale clans."

Sperm whales use distinct vocalizations to identify different whale clans, new research finds These creatures use much more complex communication than we once thought.

Evidence from sperm whale clans of symbolic marking in non-human cultures (no public access)

Why whale song is like pop music

Amazing stuff! How new whale songs spread across the Pacific Ocean!

Pioneering study aims to enable humans to talk to Sperm whales

Amazing stuff!

Update as of 4/30/2021: Talking with whales Project aims to translate sperm whale calls

"... The new interdisciplinary Cetacean Translation Initiative (CETI) kicks off this week at a press conference in Dominica in the Caribbean, where the project will take place. University of Haifa scientists will be joined by colleagues in marine biology, marine acoustics, artificial intelligence, and linguistics from Harvard University, The City University of New York (CUNY), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Imperial College London, U.C. Berkeley and others. ...
The Sperm whale, which is considered a vulnerable species, has the largest brain on Earth, more than five times heavier than a human’s. Like humans, it also has a complex communication system and lives in tightly knit family groups. ..."

"Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) is a transdisciplinary research initiative bringing together leading technologists, roboticists, cryptographers, linguists, and marine scientists to study the communication of the world’s largest toothed predator: the sperm whale.
In the late 1960s [not very long ago], scientists, including Dr. Roger Payne, a guiding member and principal advisor of Project CETI discovered that whales sing to one another. His recordings, Songs of the Humpback Whale, sparked the “Save the Whales” movement, one of the most successful conservation initiatives. ..."

Pioneering study aims to enable humans to talk to whales - ISRAEL21c In an ambitious five year project, top Israel, US and UK research institutes plan to learn how to communicate with Sperm whales. What WILL they talk about?

The project website: https://www.projectceti.org/

Previously Unknown Beaked Whale Species Spotted off Mexico

How is this possible that in the year 2020, we still discover new animals of the size of a whale?

Contrast that with the daily bombardment with reports of the "settled" science of the Global Warming hoax and Climate Change religion!

Previously Unknown Beaked Whale Species Spotted off Mexico | The Scientist Magazine® A team of scientists searching for a rare species of whale instead found a species of whale they say has never been recorded.

Grandmother Orcas Help Young Whales Survive and Thrive: Study

Recommendable! More research in the animal world confirms the important role of grandmothers. Unfortunately, we learn nothing or little about grandpas in this study!

Grandmother Orcas Help Young Whales Survive and Thrive: Study | The Scientist Magazine®: Post-menopausal orcas tied to an increase in calf survival by providing food, care, and guidance.

Humpback whales recovered from near-extinction in the South Atlantic

Perhaps, after all, the so called sixth mass extinction event is not much more than demagoguery and scaremongering!

Humpback whales recovered from near-extinction in the South Atlantic | Science News: A new count shows the population off Brazil went from about 450 in the 1950s to some 25,000 today.

Some Whales Live More Than 200 Years

Posted: 1/6/2015

Trigger

Just read “How some whales live more than 200 years”. Humans only recently discovered that there is a whale species in our oceans that lives up to 200 years.

Longevity Extended

Before that were it not turtles to be known to be the longest living animals on earth at about 100 years or more?

A salient quote from the above article (emphasis added): “This is the first time that the genome of a large cetacean [marine mammal] has been sequenced. The researchers compared the whale’s genome with that of nine mammals, including other cetaceans, cows, rats, and humans, they report online today in Cell Reports. Their comparative analysis uncovered mutations in two genes, one that is thought to confer resistance to cancer and is also linked to aging and DNA repair; the other is involved with DNA repair only.”

John D. Rockefeller Saved The Sperm Whale

Trigger

My blog post title is probably an exaggeration. :-)

Just read this article titled “The Audacity of Frack” Where Michael Barone writes (emphasis added):

“The Frackers reminds me of the enormous risks taken by John D. Rockefeller, whose kerosene replaced whale oil for lighting (and saved those wondrous mammals from slaughter)”

Do high school students of public schools in the U.S. learn about this? I seriously doubt it! Same applies to Germany.

A Much Maligned Robber Baron

So called muckraker journalism plus a gullible and do-gooder, but misguided U.S. president (Theodore Roosevelt) joined forces to cut down this incredible entrepreneur.

By the way, Wikipedia refers to Muckraker journalism as “truthful” and “watchdog journalism”. This is laughable! Frequently biased and tendentious would probably be more appropriate.