The arctic population of blue whales that reside around Africa are highly endangered with less than 1% of its original pre-whaling size still remaining. Accordingly surprising was the stranding of a blue whale carcass in Namibia last week. It was the first-ever stranding of the species in Southern Africa since the end of commercial whaling.
The stranded blue whale was a 18.3-metre long female. Her injuries, a broken flipper and injured flank, were congruent with a ship strike.
As sad as this incident is, Simon Elwen, the Namibian Dolphin Project director, says that it might be a sign of the population’s recovery. Though there are less than 10 sightings of live blue whales around southern Africa to date, frequent acoustic observations support the theory of an overall population increase. “The downside of recovering populations of large whales is that with increasing whale numbers comes increasing negative interactions with human impacts like fishing, entanglement and ships, not to mention the impacts of overfishing and habitat change.”
It remains to be seen whether the arctic population of the endangered blue whale can make a recovery from the devastating whale-fishing era.
The full article can be found here: WATCH | Rare blue whale found dead at Walvis Bay after suspected ship strike (sowetanlive.co.za)
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