Too Many Whales !

We feared that the majestic Humpback whale was heading for extinction back in the 1960's. A wave of sentiment put pressure on the whaling industry and at the same time a bright new industry was created that now employs thousands of people. In particular, Queensland discovered that there was money to be made taking people on excursions to sea to watch whales breach.

The number of nations harpooning whales dropped sharply and now it is only Japan that continues commercial whaling under the guise of conducting scientific research and they are vacating the Antarctic and in future will only take whales in their home waters.

Every year the waters off eastern Australia bring more whales to the cavalcade that heads north and returns later in the year.  Consequently, we anguish when whales and their prodigy get caught in the shark nets guarding our beaches.  There are also whale deaths from unknown causes and a dead whale attracts schools of sharks that make coastal swimming unsafe.   There is nothing more unpleasant to coastal residents than a decomposing whale stranded on their local beach.  The smell is atrocious.

Now the University of Queensland is warning us that whales are breeding in plague proportions.   From just a few Humpbacks surviving in the wild the tally has increased and by the latest count the numbers have reached 25,000 in 2015.  In fact this increase in numbers is evident across all whale species.  In particular, the grey whale numbers are causing problems in United States waters.   They were causing shipping disruptions in busy port areas and the number of beachings was steadily rising with consequent removal costs.

Queensland university is warning us that while Humpback whales have regained their numbers from the 1960's, they are showing no signs of levelling off.  It is quite possible that they will create herd numbers of between 40,000 and 50,000 - and then crash and that could happen in the foreseeable future.

Unfortunately, there is little in the way of scientific research on large sea animals that have been hunted to near extinction and then recovered.  In the past the sight of a whale was a welcome anomaly but these ever increasing numbers are fast reaching the proportions where they will create hazards to commerce, and if the numbers crash it will wipe out a viable tourist industry.

A return to whaling would implement the control of numbers but that would be unsustainable in tandem with the whale watching industry and unfortunately the use of harpoons with explosive war heads delivers such a barbaric death that it would repulse whale lovers.

We simply do not have an answer to this problem.  Whales are very intelligent animals and we can only hope that this increase problem triggers some sort of herd awareness that causes the numbers to level off naturally.