Sperm Whale Slowly Recover in Galapagos - Hal Whitehead

Sperm whales are the largest toothed whales, but until the worldwide whaling moratorium in 1982, they were hunted ruthlessly across the world’s oceans, prized for their oils that were used for many purposes, including automatic car transmissions. But when the killing stopped, the whales took a long time to rebound in the waters around the Galapagos Islands. Marine biologist Hal Whitehead explains that the whale cull that removed as many as 40,000 sperm whales each year from the oceans degraded their intricate family units, resulting in way fewer whale calves than would normally be observed. The whales’ numbers are slowly rebounding, but Whitehead explains that they’re not an animal that was built to recover from large population collapses.