“Recent research suggests there were over 50,000 eastern Australian humpback whales in 2024, up from 25,000 a decade ago,” reports The Doomslayer.
ABC Australia reports:
Once hunted almost to extinction, the group of humpback whales currently migrating down Australia’s east coast has bounced back — and then some.
In a preliminary report to the federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, marine scientists estimate there were more than 50,000 eastern Australian humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) in 2024.
That’s around 20,000 more individuals than the estimated pre-whaling population of the early 1900s.
The report, while not yet peer-reviewed, is in line with previous predictions that the eastern humpback population may peak at around 50,000 individuals in the 2020s.
Two centuries ago, these humpback whales were ubiquitous. In Hobart, the chief city of the Australian state of Tasmania, sailors in the early 1800s had to “navigate through multitudes of whales congregating in the Derwent river, while home owners by the water complained of noisy whale song.” But later, all whale species were hunted for their oil, including humpbacks, and many whale species “were almost wiped out.”
Crocodiles are flourishing in northern Australia after nearly disappearing from Australia in the 1970s. Now, there are over 100,000 of them, growing up to 20 feet long and some weighing more than 2,200 pounds. They “hunt along the coasts, rivers and wetlands of the continent’s far north.”
Some reports suggest that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is making a comeback, with the highest coral cover in decades for parts of the Great Barrier Reef.
