Εvery year the Humpback Whales cross over 15,000 miles (24,000 km) to the oceans of the world in search of “krill” , which, despite its small size, is the main source of food for some of the larger species. The warm waters surrounding Rurutu of French Polynesia are one of the few locations where the southern population of the megaborhels is known to give birth, making it ideal for shooting and photographing small whales playing with their mother.
But humpback whales are hunted and now they are threatened with extinction.

The big journal to life or death for humpback whales

Humpback whales have enormous creatures – about the size of a school bus. They are known for their haunting and melodic songs and for breaking the water with amazing acrobatic abilities.
Humpbacks can grow to 60 feet (18 meters) long, and they can weigh a whopping 40 tons (about half the size of a blue whale), according to NOAA. Their flippers can grow up to 16 feet (5 m) long, which is the largest appendage in the world. Their tails are also massive and grow up to 18 feet (5.5 m) wide. Like most whales, females are bigger than males.

Humpbacks roam all over the world, but exactly where they may be found depends on the time of year. In the summer, many humpbacks spend their time in the high-latitude feeding areas such as the Gulf of Alaska or the Gulf of Maine, according to NOAA. During the winter, they swim to the warm waters closer to the Equator, around Hawaii, South America and Africa. The exception is the humpbacks that live in the Arabian Sea. They stay there year-round, eating and mating all in the same area, according to the ACS.

Why are humpback whales hunted

According to the WWFAs recently as 1988, humpback whales were listed as endangered by IUCN. Populations have now recovered, due to the introduction of commerical whaling bans. There are still concerns about apparently discrete and small subpopulations of humpback whales, including those in the Arabian Sea, the western Pacific, the west coast of Africa, and the South Pacific subpopulations in portions of Oceania.

Humans hunted humpback whales commercially for oil, meat, and baleen from the 17th to the early 20th century. Humpback whales are still hunted in Greenland and by the Bequians of St. Vincent and the Grenadines for subsistence purposes, but only 1-2 per year are caught. Plans to resume hunting for humpback whales by Japan may have a more damaging impact.
Like other large whales, humpbacks may be harmed by pollution, ship strikes, and entanglement in fishing gear. Offshore oil and gas development is also a clear threat.

Extinct whales list

All kinds of whales are in danger, though.
According to International Whaling Commission,
Blue whales in the Southern Hemisphere were reduced to only a few percent of their unexploited stock size (which may have been as many as 200,000) by industrial whaling in the Southern Ocean, primarily from the 1920s to the 1940s. Though they are still at very low levels, encouragingly the available evidence reveals an increasing trend of around 8% per year in recent years. Blue whales in the North Atlantic were also heavily exploited. A full evaluation of the current status has not been carried out. Encouragingly though, the available evidence suggests they are increasing, at least in the central North Atlantic; at present, there are around 1,000 animals off Iceland and several hundred in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They remain rare in the northeastern Atlantic where they were once common. Blue whales in the North Pacific were again heavily exploited.

There is insufficient data to comment on current status in most parts of the North Pacific, although there is evidence of an increase of about 3% for the Gulf of California. Blue whales in the eastern tropical Pacific are thought to number around 3,000. Humpback whales (protected worldwide since the 1960s although few individuals are allowed to be caught by subsistence whalers) Humpback whales in the Southern Hemisphere were heavily exploited by commercial whaling primarily from the 1920s-1950s in both their Southern Ocean feeding grounds and their tropical breeding grounds.

Thankfully, in most areas for which there are good data, humpback whales have shown evidence of strong recovery towards their unexploited size (which may have been 75,000-100,000 in total), with annual increases of around 10% being recorded in a number of areas including Australia, Southern Africa and South America. However, there are no evidence of recovery for populations in some areas such as Oceania, where there may be as few as 2,000 animals. The total Southern Hemisphere abundance is probably at least 60,000.

Fin whale populations in the Southern Hemisphere were heavily exploited by industrial whaling in the Southern Ocean, especially between the 1930s and 1960s. These data do not allow a full assessment of the current status, as the surveys that have been undertaken (usually south of 60 ° S) do not cover all their primary summer distribution but there is no evidence that they have recovered to anywhere near unexploited levels (which may have been around 200,000). Existing estimates of the limited parts of the range covered are of the order of several thousand animals.

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