New Science! = Good news for whale recovery in Namibia

You might have seen some of the media articles doing the rounds - the good news coming out of this paper has been widely shared. Led by Dr Bridget James during her post doc with us last year and including sightings from the Namibian Dolphin Project, Jean Paul Roux, Monique Radford and John Paterson -- This was originally just a little note compiling sightings and strandings of the BLUE and FIN whales around Namibia and the southern Benguela off W. SA as we kept bumping into them... but it's turned into a useful piece of science!

Prior to 2007 (Trevor Branch et al's global review of all blue whale sightings)...there were only TWO sightings of Blue whales off southern Africa (post-whaling). There have been a lot more since then - indicating that population recovery is underway. Let's hope it keeps going and we see more of these amazing animals (preferably alive and at sea!).

James, B.S., Gridley, T., Radford, M., Paterson, J., Roux, J.P. and Elwen, S.H., 2026. Recent increased presence of blue whales Balaenoptera musculus and fin whales B. physalus in the southeastern Atlantic: evidence of recovery?. African Journal of Marine Science, 48(2), pp.147-155.