The Quiet Comeback of Whale Populations, Four Decades After the Whaling Ban

In December 2025, off the west coast of South Africa, Chris and Monique Fallows photographed something no one had recorded before: a humpback whale "supergroup" of nearly 300 individuals moving together through the water. According to WKMG (July 26, 2026), the sighting resolved to the highest number of large whales ever identified in one day anywhere on Earth.

A population that went from 10,000 to more than 100,000

Forty years ago, humpback whales in the Southern Hemisphere numbered fewer than 10,000. Today, according to assessments by scientists and the International Whaling Commission cited by WKMG (July 26, 2026), that figure exceeds 100,000.

The pattern holds in specific, monitored populations. Off Rio de Janeiro, the same species has climbed from around 2,000 to approximately 35,000 in 40 years, nearing pre-whaling levels, Enrico Marcovaldi, co-founder of the Humpback Whale Project, told KSL TV (July 1, 2026). "It shows that the whales are making a recovery, are healthy and thriving, and hopefully they'll continue to do so," he said.

Blue and fin whales are moving slower, but moving

Recovery looks different for the species that were hunted hardest. Antarctic blue whales remain at about 3% of their pre-whaling numbers, though the population is growing 5 to 8% a year, while fin whales have recovered to more than 30% of historical levels and are growing 4 to 5% annually, according to a study led by Dr. Bridget James of the University of Cape Town, reported by Scimex (May 23, 2026).

James's team compiled more than 60 years of sightings and stranding records off Namibia and South Africa, from May 1964 to March 2025, and found that 95% of blue and fin whale sightings in that dataset were recorded after 2012. "Our results provide important evidence that these giants of the ocean are slowly recovering from the devastating impact of 20th-century commercial whaling, which pushed them to the brink of extinction," James said, according to Earth.com (August 17, 2026).

Not every species is recovering at a good rate

The North Atlantic right whale shows the limits of the comeback. The North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium estimated the population at 384 animals at the start of 2024, the third consecutive annual increase from a low of 358 in 2020, according to NOAA Fisheries (July 28, 2026). The 2026 calving season produced 23 calves, the highest count in seventeen years. NOAA notes that roughly 50 calves a year are needed for the species to show clear recovery, and only about 70 breeding females remain.

New York's front-row seat

Nowhere has the shift been more visible to ordinary people than off the coast of one of the busiest port regions in the United States. Gotham Whale, a nonprofit that began formally monitoring the waters off New York in 2012 with just five whales in its catalog, now records 80 to 100 unique whales a year, and earlier this summer added its 500th individually identified whale to that catalog, according to Greater Long Island (August 20, 2026).

Carl LoBue, New York oceans and fisheries director for The Nature Conservancy, said seeing a whale off Long Island was once rare. Now, he told Greater Long Island (August 20, 2026), "there are multiple whale watching boats spotting whales nearly every day." Chris St Lawrence, a naturalist with Gotham Whale, described the change in blunter terms to TAG24 (August 18, 2026): "I never thought that I would see whales like this off the coast of New York."

New York's government has responded. Governor Kathy Hochul signed the New York Whale Awareness Act, legislation aimed at reducing dangerous encounters between vessels and whales, Greater Long Island reported (August 20, 2026). Mariners already have one tool built for that problem: NOAA's Whale Alert app lets vessel operators report live, dead or distressed whales in real time, and on the East Coast it displays management areas for the endangered North Atlantic right whale, according to NOAA Fisheries (March 6, 2020).

Why it happened

The 1986 global moratorium on commercial whaling removed the primary driver of the decline. A study published in the Journal of Applied Ecology in July 2024 found that large baleen whale populations keep increasing rapidly across a wide range of recovery levels, only slowing as they approach pre-whaling numbers, challenging the assumption that growth tapers off quickly. The research team, which included Dr. Yu Kanaji, Dr. Rob Williams, Dr. Alex Zerbini and Professor Trevor Branch, argued that international recovery targets — which the study describes as commonly set at 60% of pre-whaling levels — should be raised to a default of 80%.

Citizen science has also changed what scientists can see. Gotham Whale's catalog, built from photographs submitted by whale-watching passengers and volunteer spotters rather than a dedicated research fleet, is one example: a small nonprofit has assembled sighting records precise enough to track individual whales returning to the same stretch of ocean year after year. Orca Network's Whale Sighting Network operates on the same principle, inviting members of the public to log encounters that feed directly into the databases researchers use to track populations over time.

None of that infrastructure existed when the moratorium took effect in 1986. Forty years on, the combination of a hunting ban and a much larger set of eyes on the water — professional and amateur alike — has turned what was once an occasional, newsworthy sighting into a steady stream of data on species recovering at very different speeds.

Sources

This article was reported from the following sources.

1. Blue and fin whales are returning to waters where whaling wiped them out — Earth.com, 2026-08-17

2. Whales have returned to Long Island waters. Albany is responding — Greater Long Island, 2026-08-20

3. Whales spark joy in New York but face threats from boat traffic — The Straits Times, 2026-08-18

4. Whale sightings on the rise in New York as experts warn of fresh threats — TAG24, 2026-08-18

5. Whale 'supergroups' show numbers are rebounding from hunting. But Iran war holds dangers for them — WKMG, 2026-07-26

6. Sightings of humpback whales surge in Rio de Janeiro, fueling demand for whale-watching trips — KSL TV, 2026-07-01

7. Whale Populations in 2026: 40 Years After the Ban — William Drumm, 2026-07-15

8. Sightings off Southern Africa suggest blue and fin whales may be rebounding — Mongabay, 2026-07-06

9. Increase in sightings suggests blue and fin whales are making a comeback — Scimex, 2026-05-23

10. Forty years after the commercial whaling ban, there's both progress and more work ahead — WWF, 2026-03-11

11. North Atlantic Right Whale Recovery: 2026 Update — NOAA Fisheries, 2026-07-28

12. Why humpback whales are coming back — EarthSky, 2025-12-08

13. Rapid increase rates in large whale populations continue until they near carrying capacity — Journal of Applied Ecology, 2024-08-26

14. Whales Are Recovering From Whaling. Can They Survive Climate Change? — Medium, 2026-03-13

15. Whale Alert — NOAA Fisheries, 2020-03-06

16. Whale Sighting Network — Orca Network, 2026

All source links validated at time of publish.