Humpback whales once on the brink of extinction make remarkable recovery

A humpback whale population in the South Atlantic that was nearly hunted to extinction has made an astonishing rebound, researchers say.

In a new study published this month in the Royal Society Open Science, the authors write that the Western South Atlantic (WSA) humpbacks were "the first major target of commercial whaling in the Antarctic." Worldwide, 300,000 humpback whales were killed by hunters between the late 1700s and mid-1900s, Smithsonian reports, and by 1958, just 440 WSA humpbacks were left.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.