40 Years After the Whaling Ban: What Happened to Whale Populations
Forty years after the 1986 whaling ban, what happened to whale populations? Humpback recovery, the right whale crisis, and the climate role of whales.
Whale Populations in 2026
Part 4 of the Ocean Worth Saving series. By William Drumm, underwater photographer and ocean ambassador.
In 1986, the International Whaling Commission issued a moratorium on commercial whaling. It was one of the most significant conservation decisions in the history of marine protection. This year it turned 40.
The question worth asking is an honest one: what happened?
The answer is not simple. Some whale populations have made recoveries so dramatic they are being called miracles. Others remain critically endangered, pushed toward extinction by threats that have nothing to do with whaling. The ocean did not get a clean bill of health when the harpoons stopped. But it did get something: proof that recovery is possible when humans make a decision and hold to it.
Here is the full picture, the bad and the good together.
Quick Facts: Whale Populations 40 Years After the Moratorium
- Year the IWC commercial whaling moratorium took effect: 1986
- Pre-moratorium reduction in humpback whale populations: more than 95%
- Antarctic blue whale population collapse: from approximately 200,000 to about 300 individuals
- Western South Atlantic humpback population recovery: from 450 to approximately 25,000
- Eastern Australia humpback population recovery: from just over 100 in 1963 to approximately 50,000 today
- Global humpback population estimate: about 80,000, up from approximately 10,000 at its lowest
- Blue whale population estimate today: 10,000 to 25,000, up from approximately 2,000 at its lowest
- North Atlantic right whale population: 384 individuals
- Pacific gray whale body size reduction since 2000: 13%
- Whales, dolphins, and porpoises killed by bycatch annually: approximately 300,000
- Carbon stored by a single whale over its lifetime: about 33 tonnes of CO2
- Great whale species currently endangered or vulnerable: 7 of 14
- Countries that still conduct commercial or subsistence whaling: Japan, Norway, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and several indigenous communities under IWC exemptions
What the Whaling Era Did
The scale of 20th century commercial whaling is difficult to process. It was industrial extraction on a civilizational scale. Before the moratorium took effect in 1986, all populations of humpback whales were greatly reduced, most by more than 95%.
The Antarctic blue whale, the largest animal that has ever existed on this planet, went from a population size of roughly 200,000 to little more than 300. The western South Atlantic humpback, hunted heavily in the early 1900s, fell to approximately 450 individuals.
These were not localized declines. They were near-total collapses of some of the most ecologically significant animals in the ocean. Whales are not passive passengers in marine ecosystems. They cycle nutrients from the deep to the surface. They fertilize phytoplankton through their movements and waste. A single whale stores around 33 tonnes of CO2 over its lifetime. Removing them from the ocean at industrial scale was not just a conservation failure. It was a disruption of ocean chemistry that we are still measuring.
Whaling Did Not Entirely Stop
The 1986 moratorium covered commercial whaling of large whales by IWC member nations. It did not cover all whaling everywhere. Several categories continue today.
Norway
Norway formally objected to the moratorium when it was adopted, which under IWC rules allows the country to set its own quotas. Norwegian commercial whaling continues today, primarily targeting minke whales. Annual quotas have ranged from 580 to over 1,000 minke whales in recent years, though actual catches are typically well below quota due to declining domestic demand for whale meat.
Japan
Japan withdrew from the IWC entirely in 2019 and resumed commercial whaling in its own coastal waters. Japan currently hunts minke, Bryde’s, and sei whales within its exclusive economic zone, with quotas of several hundred animals per year. Demand for whale meat in Japan has declined sharply since the 1960s, and the industry now operates with significant government subsidies. International criticism continues, but Japan is no longer party to IWC restrictions.
Iceland
Iceland resumed commercial whaling in 2006, primarily targeting fin whales, a species classified as vulnerable globally, and minke whales. Activity has been intermittent. In 2024, Iceland’s government issued limited annual whaling licenses with restrictions, signaling the industry may be winding down. Iceland’s whaling has been particularly controversial because fin whales are the second-largest animals on Earth and were among the most depleted species before the moratorium.
Faroe Islands
The Faroe Islands continue the traditional grindadrap, a community drive hunt of long-finned pilot whales and other small cetaceans. Annual takes range from a few hundred to over 1,400 animals depending on the year. The Faroese government considers this subsistence and cultural rather than commercial, and it operates outside IWC jurisdiction since pilot whales are not large whales. The 2021 grind that killed 1,428 white-sided dolphins drew significant international attention and reform discussions.
Indigenous and Subsistence Whaling
Several indigenous communities are permitted small whaling quotas under IWC aboriginal subsistence whaling provisions. These include Alaska Natives hunting bowhead whales, Russian indigenous communities, Greenlanders hunting fin and minke whales, and the people of Bequia in St. Vincent and the Grenadines hunting humpback whales. Total takes are small and managed through cultural and food-security frameworks rather than commercial markets.
What This Means
Total annual whale catches today are dramatically smaller than the industrial harvests that drove the pre-1986 collapses. The current threats to global whale populations are bycatch, ship strikes, ocean noise, climate change, and habitat degradation, not whaling. But whaling has not entirely ended, and the political fight to expand or contract these remaining hunts continues.
The Threats That Replaced Whaling
The whaling ban worked. But whales still face a gauntlet of threats the moratorium could not address.
Bycatch
Bycatch is the accidental capture of non-target species in fishing gear. For whales, it usually means entanglement in gillnets, longlines, lobster and crab traps, or active fishing nets. An estimated 300,000 whales, dolphins, and porpoises die from bycatch every year, making it the single largest source of cetacean mortality in the modern era.
Right whales are particularly vulnerable. Their feeding behavior at the surface, slow movement, and lack of predator-avoidance instincts, which evolved over millions of years without humans, put them in direct conflict with the dense fishing gear of the western North Atlantic. The 384 North Atlantic right whales remaining face an entanglement rate so high that scientists estimate 85% of living right whales bear scars from gear interactions.
Solutions exist: ropeless fishing gear, which uses acoustic releases instead of permanent vertical lines, seasonal closures during whale migration, and gear modifications that reduce entanglement severity. Adoption has been slow and contentious.
Ship Strikes
Vessel collisions are the second-largest source of whale mortality in industrialized waters. Large ships often do not detect whale presence at all, and at speeds above 10 knots, collisions are typically fatal for the whale. The North Atlantic right whale recorded 8 vessel strikes in 2024 alone, on a population of 384.
Solutions include speed restrictions in known whale habitat, the most effective intervention, since reducing ship speed below 10 knots cuts mortality by an estimated 80 to 90%, along with seasonal shipping lane modifications and real-time whale-detection technologies. Mandatory speed restrictions remain politically difficult to implement.
Underwater Noise
Shipping traffic is projected to increase by up to 1,209% between 2014 and 2050. Whales depend on sound for navigation, communication, foraging, and finding mates. The chronic noise of modern shipping can disrupt all of these functions. Some species, like the North Atlantic right whale, now communicate at higher frequencies to compete with vessel noise, a behavioral shift documented over the past decade.
Quieter ship designs and routing optimizations exist, but adoption is voluntary and slow.
Climate Change and Food Scarcity
Research published in 2024 found that the body size of Pacific gray whales has shrunk by 13% since 2000, a sign that environmental stress and food scarcity are affecting body condition even in whales that are not being directly hunted. Warming oceans, shifting prey distributions, and changes in krill availability in polar feeding grounds all contribute. Ice loss in the Arctic is exposing northern whale populations to ship traffic and noise pollution they have never encountered.
What This Adds Up To
Seven of the 14 great whale species are still classified as endangered or vulnerable. The North Atlantic right whale at 384 individuals is one bad bycatch year away from functional extinction. The vaquita, the smallest cetacean species, is down to fewer than 10 individuals. Even species in dramatic recovery, like humpbacks and blue whales, face new pressures the moratorium could not address.
The moratorium was not a finish line. It was a starting gun.
The Recoveries That Are Real
Here is the other side of the ledger.
Humpback whale populations have grown from around 10,000 to nearly 80,000. In eastern Australia, the population is estimated at 50,000 individuals, up from just over 100 in 1963 when humpback hunting was banned. A 2024 IWC assessment confirmed strong overall humpback recovery since the mid-1960s.
The western South Atlantic humpback population has grown to approximately 25,000 whales, close to pre-whaling numbers, from a low of just 450 individuals in the mid-1950s. NOAA’s lead researcher on the study said simply: wildlife populations can recover from exploitation if proper management is applied.
Blue whale populations have risen from approximately 2,000 at their lowest point to between 10,000 and 25,000 individuals today. Two decades of audio recordings in the Southern Ocean show a growing regularity of blue whale calls, indicating increasing populations. In 2024, researchers spotted over a dozen blue whales off the Seychelles for the first time since 1966. Whales returning to waters they had not inhabited in 60 years.
The ocean remembers where it was, even when we have forgotten.
What Whales Mean for Everything Else
Whales are not just charismatic megafauna worth protecting because they are beautiful, though they are. They are ecological engineers whose presence or absence shapes entire ocean systems.
When a whale feeds at depth and surfaces, it releases nutrient-rich waste that fertilizes phytoplankton near the surface. Phytoplankton produce roughly half of all the oxygen on Earth and absorb vast quantities of CO2. More whales means more phytoplankton. More phytoplankton means a healthier atmosphere.
A single humpback whale stores approximately 33 tonnes of CO2 over its lifetime. When it dies, that carbon sinks to the ocean floor, locked away for centuries. The recovery of just the South Atlantic humpback population has resulted in over 800,000 tonnes of CO2 being stored in the deep sea.
Whales are not a conservation cause separate from climate change. They are part of the solution to it.
Bring the water home
What I Saw in Mag Bay
I was shooting in Mag Bay during a difficult personal period. I was on a boat in Baja California, camping on the beach, watching humpback whales surface and breach against a desert coastline.
There were mothers with calves. There were males competing for position. There were long boat rides with nothing ahead of you but water and horizon and whale blows in the distance.
I thought about what it meant that those whales were there at all. That their ancestors had survived. That the decision made in 1986 had held long enough for those specific whales to be born and grow to adulthood in water that no longer wanted to kill them.
Conservation works when we decide it does, and then hold to that decision even when it is inconvenient.
The Whales Held Up Their End of the Deal
The moratorium is 40 years old. The humpbacks in eastern Australia went from 100 to 50,000 in that time. The South Atlantic population came back from 450 to 25,000. Blue whales returned to the Seychelles for the first time since 1966.
This is what sustained, enforced, international conservation looks like when it works.
The North Atlantic right whale at 384 individuals is what it looks like when we do not extend the same commitment to the threats that replaced the ones we removed.
Both things are true. Both things matter. The question is which direction we are moving.
The whales held up their end of the deal. The ocean is waiting to see if we will hold up ours.
Frequently Asked Questions About Whales and Whaling
When was whaling banned?
The International Whaling Commission adopted a global moratorium on commercial whaling in 1982. The moratorium took effect in 1986 and remains in place today, though several countries such as Norway, Japan, and Iceland continue commercial whaling under various exemptions or by withdrawing from IWC oversight.
Is whaling illegal?
Commercial whaling is prohibited globally under the IWC moratorium that took effect in 1986. However, the prohibition is not absolute. Norway formally objected to the moratorium and continues commercial whaling. Japan withdrew from the IWC in 2019 and resumed commercial whaling in its territorial waters. Iceland conducts intermittent commercial whaling. Indigenous communities are permitted small subsistence quotas. So whaling is illegal commercially in most of the world but continues legally in several specific contexts.
Are whale populations recovering?
Many populations are recovering dramatically. Humpback whales have grown from approximately 10,000 to nearly 80,000 globally. The eastern Australia humpback population went from just over 100 in 1963 to about 50,000 today. The western South Atlantic humpback population recovered from 450 to approximately 25,000. Blue whales have grown from about 2,000 to between 10,000 and 25,000. Other species, particularly the North Atlantic right whale, remain critically endangered.
Which whale species are most endangered?
The North Atlantic right whale at 384 individuals is among the most threatened. The vaquita, the smallest cetacean species, has fewer than 10 individuals left. Pacific gray whales are showing concerning size reductions. Seven of the 14 great whale species are currently classified as endangered or vulnerable. Less famous species like the North Pacific right whale, estimated at around 30 individuals, are functionally on the edge of extinction.
Why are right whales declining?
North Atlantic right whales face two primary threats: entanglement in fishing gear and vessel strikes. Their feeding behavior at the surface, slow movement, and lack of predator-avoidance instincts make them especially vulnerable. In 2024 alone, the population recorded 16 entanglements and 8 vessel strikes. Approximately 85% of living right whales bear scars from gear interactions. The species cannot reproduce fast enough to offset these losses.
Do whales fight climate change?
Yes, in measurable ways. A single whale stores approximately 33 tonnes of CO2 over its lifetime. When a whale dies and sinks to the deep sea floor, that carbon is locked away for centuries. Whales also fertilize phytoplankton through nutrient cycling, bringing nutrients from the deep to the surface in their waste. Phytoplankton produce roughly half of all oxygen on Earth. The recovery of just the South Atlantic humpback population alone has resulted in an estimated 800,000 tonnes of CO2 stored in the deep sea.
Which countries still hunt whales?
Norway conducts commercial whaling of minke whales under a formal IWC objection. Japan resumed commercial whaling in its territorial waters in 2019 after withdrawing from the IWC. Iceland conducts intermittent commercial whaling, primarily of fin and minke whales. The Faroe Islands continue traditional drive hunts of pilot whales. Several indigenous communities, including Alaska Natives, Greenlanders, Russian indigenous communities, and Bequia, have permitted subsistence quotas.
What is bycatch and how does it affect whales?
Bycatch is the accidental capture of non-target species in fishing gear. For whales, it usually means entanglement in gillnets, longlines, traps, or active fishing nets. An estimated 300,000 whales, dolphins, and porpoises die from bycatch every year, making it the single largest source of cetacean mortality in the modern era. Solutions include ropeless fishing gear, seasonal closures, and gear modifications.
How do ship strikes affect whales?
Vessel collisions are the second-largest source of whale mortality in industrialized waters. At speeds above 10 knots, collisions are typically fatal for whales. Speed restrictions below 10 knots in known whale habitat reduce mortality by an estimated 80 to 90%, but mandatory restrictions remain politically difficult to implement.
How can individuals help whale conservation?
Support seafood certification programs that account for bycatch impacts; choose responsible whale-watching operators when traveling; donate to organizations doing whale conservation and rescue such as Whale and Dolphin Conservation, the International Marine Mammal Project, Oceans Initiative, and the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium; advocate for vessel speed restrictions in whale habitat; reduce single-use plastic and ocean pollution; and support policies that fund underwater noise research and reduction.
Take Action
If this piece was useful, here are a few things you can do:
- Read Part 1 of the Ocean Worth Saving series: Is the Ocean Going to Be Okay? What 2025's Data Actually Shows.
- Read Part 2: Water Bankruptcy and the Ocean: Why Wetlands Matter.
- Read Part 3: Sharks Are in Trouble. Conservation Is Also Working.
- Look at my underwater photography of humpback whales in Mag Bay.
- Support a whale conservation organization: Whale and Dolphin Conservation, the International Marine Mammal Project, Oceans Initiative, or the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium.
- Advocate for vessel speed restrictions in whale habitat, the single most effective intervention to reduce ship-strike mortality.
- Sign up for my newsletter, where I write about ocean stories, conservation news, and behind-the-scenes work.
Share this piece if you found it useful. Every person who understands what recovery can look like is one more on the whales' side.
Sources and Further Reading
- WWF: "Forty Years After the Commercial Whaling Ban: A Status Report on Global Whale Populations." 2026.
- International Whaling Commission: Status of Whales 2024 Annual Assessment.
- Royal Society Open Science: "Assessing the Recovery of an Antarctic Predator from Historical Exploitation."
- New England Aquarium: North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium 2025 Annual Report.
- NOAA Fisheries: Marine Mammal Stock Assessment Reports, latest revisions.
- IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: 2025 update on cetacean species status.
- International Marine Mammal Project (IMMP) at Earth Island Institute.
- Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC): Global conservation status reports.
- Roman, J., et al. "Whales as marine ecosystem engineers." Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 2014.
- Pacific Gray Whale Body Size Study, 2024.
- Oceans Initiative: Bycatch and ship-strike mortality research.
- Ropeless Consortium: Technical reports on entanglement-reduction fishing gear.
Read Next in the Ocean Worth Saving Series
- Part 1: Is the Ocean Going to Be Okay? What 2025's Data Actually Shows.
- Part 2: Water Bankruptcy and the Ocean: Why Wetlands Matter.
- Part 3: Sharks Are in Trouble. Conservation Is Also Working.
- Part 4: You are here.
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