A barnacled right whale, so named because they were the ‘right’ ones to hunt for their oil. While the southern hemisphere’s population is doing well, they are functionally extinct in the eastern Atlantic and fewer than 400 remain off North America. (Taken under NOAA permit #14603.) Bowhead whales may not be the only species that can live to 200 years old. Researchers have found that the industrial hunting of great whales has masked the ability of these underwater giants to also live to great ages In Moby-Dick, Herman Melville’s epic novel of 1851, the author asks if whales would survive the remorseless human hunt. Yes, he says, as he foresees a future flooded world in which the whale would outlive us and “spout his frothed defiance to the skies”. Moby Dick was a grizzled old sperm whale that had miraculously escaped the harpoons. But a new scientific paper is set to prove what oceanic peoples – such as the Inuit , Maōri and Haida – have long believed: that whales are capable of living for a very long time. Indeed, many more than we thought possible may have been born before Melville wrote his book. The paper, published in the journal Science Advances, suggests that the industrial hunting of great whales such as sperm, blue, fin and right whales, “masked” the ability of these underwater giants to live to great ages . It has been known since the 1990s that Arctic bowhead whales, with their slow metabolism enabled by cold waters and plentiful food, can reach 200 years old or more, as indicated by carbon-dating of old Inuit stone harpoon tips found embedded in bowheads that had survived earlier hunts. A fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus) off the Azores. The species has been found to live for half as long […]