Over the Humpback: Some big whales recovering

[depakid]

Spyhopping

There's bad news and good news from the world of marine megafauna. The bad: Almost a quarter of the 80 types of whales, dolphins, and porpoises are in trouble, with nine listed as "endangered" or "critically endangered" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Entanglement in fishing gear poses the main threat. The good: Thanks to a global hunting moratorium, humpback, common minke, and southern right whales have thrived enough to be downlisted to "least concern" by the IUCN. "The large whales, the commercially important ones, have for the most part responded well under protection," says IUCN's Randall Reeves.

Norway, which along with Japan and Iceland has defied the whaling moratorium, called the IUCN report evidence that the ban be lifted. Conservationists don't see it that way. "This strengthens our opposition to whaling," said Greenpeace's Frode Pleym. "While some species have started to recover, none of them are back to the levels they had before industrial whaling started."

http://www.grist.org/news/2008/08/12/whales/