Whales

Guest

In one of your Ask a Teacher answers you mentioned that Svalbard was once an area where there was a lot of whale hunting. Are there still a lot of whales in the area? Are they hunted?

Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 64

Hello Marty,

You have good timing! Just yesterday Edith, Phil and I were hiking to an area several kilometers away across rough and rocky coastal terrain. We stopped for lunch on rocks that jutted out to the fjord. We spotted a large and a smaller Beluga Whale swimming quite close to the shoreline. They would surface and dive in sync with each other and it was indeed a beautiful sight. We assume that they were mother and offspring because of the difference in size, though even the small one was quite large! Their grey slippery bodies caught the sunlight each time they surfaced, making it easy to track them! I can't imagine anyone wanting to hurt these wonderful creatures!

Though whales were indeed once hunted in this area for economic gain, those times have ended. Whole populations were slaughtered and only through protective measures of the last twenty years or so have the reversed the decline. It takes a long time for the populations to return to an area that was hunted out.

It is not unusual to see killer whales, white whales, beluga whales, blue whales, sperm whales, sei whales, bowhead whales, minke whales, and humpback whales in the area, depending on the season.