What is the cause of the humpback whale being endangered? Is it the killer whale or fishermen?
(Marcus Alford) Answered by Andy Read of Duke University. A: Humpbacks, like many of the great whales, are not endangered due to any modern cause. Instead, their decline was caused by uncontrolled hunting early in the 20th century. Humpbacks were one of the first species to be hunted in the Antarctic, starting around 1910. More than 200,000 humpback whales were killed in the Southern Ocean in the 20th century, mostly for their blubber, which was rendered into oil and used in all kinds of products, including margarine. At least 40,000 humpbacks were also taken illegally by Soviet whalers in the 1960s. The good news is that these whales are now protected and recovering from these past hunts. The humpbacks we see here along the Antarctic Peninsula probably breed either in Ecuador or Brazil – both of these populations are now growing, although they are still much smaller than their original size. I would like to be able to travel back in time to see what our study area looked like before s
