For most of a century, the waters off southern Africa were missing their giants. Commercial whaling took a staggering toll on the blue whales and fin whales of the Atlantic before it ended, and for decades afterwards the Benguela ecosystem, the great cold current that sweeps past South Africa, Namibia and Angola, stayed quiet. Now researchers who gathered every known sighting along this coast have found something wonderful in the records: whales are being seen again, and almost all of the sightings have come in the years since 2012.
Lead researcher Bridget James describes the Benguela as a migratory corridor for the whales, a highway between their feeding and breeding grounds, and its traffic is slowly returning. Blue whale numbers are still a small fraction of what they once were, while fin whales have climbed further along the road to recovery, and scientists note the same trend is appearing in oceans around the world now that the harpoons have fallen silent. Recovery on this scale is measured in generations, not years. But the giants are finding their way back, and every tail that breaks the surface is a promise kept.
Our short take: the full story is by David Brown for Mongabay.