Scientists cheered by bowhead whale recovery despite Arctic warming

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Biologists hail ‘one of the great conservation successes’ but species’ fate uncertain as warming rapidly transforms Arctic

In some rare good news from the top of the world, bowhead whale populations have rebounded and are nearing pre-commercial whaling numbers in US waters.

Surprisingly, the whales’ recovery has actually accelerated as the Arctic warms, according to an update on the species published this week by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration.

“This is really one of the great conservation successes of the last century,” said J Craig George, a retired biologist with the North Slope borough department of wildlife management.

Bowhead whales – the only baleen whale that lives in the Arctic year-round – were once on the brink of disappearing forever. The population near Alaska was targeted by commercial whalers beginning in the 1700s for their oil, blubber and baleen. Their large, rotund bodies and slow-moving nature made them easy targets, and they were nearly hunted to extinction by the turn of the 20th century.