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Whale

Black-and-white photo of two men in outdoor gear standing besides a large harpoon gun on a boat

The Soviet Union once hunted endangered whales to the brink of extinction — but its scientists opposed whaling and secretly tracked its toll

Environment

The Soviet Union was a latecomer to industrial whaling, but it slaughtered whales by the thousands once it started and radically under-reported its toll to international monitors.

An axis deer looks up at a giraffe on Sir Bani Yas Island near Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Friday, June 9, 2017.

A new book explores culture within the animal kingdom

Environment
North Atlantic right whale with calf in blue-green waters

Little time left to save the North Atlantic right whale

Environment
Northern right whales

Endangered right whales have moved because of climate change — into dangerous waters

Climate Change
A beluga whale surfaces out of the water near a yellow net

Russia agrees to free whales held in ‘whale jail’

Environment
Northern right whale with calf

The Northern right whale, already an endangered species, is in deep trouble

Environment

No new Northern right whale calves have been born so far this year — an unprecedented occurrence, according to scientists who study them.

minke whale

In New York, a whale of a comeback story

Science

When you think of New York wildlife, whales probably aren’t the first animals that come to mind — but they’re native to the waters around the city, and they’re back.

The container ship MSC Tomoko Panama in the Santa Barbara Channel in 2009. Ships like these pose deadly threats of pollution and collision to blue whales in the area.

How do you save the whales? Slow down the ships

Environment

California’s blue whale population is making a comeback, but it still has to contend with the threat of big container ships that cross whales’ feeding grounds on the way to the ports of Los Angeles. But just by slowing down, ships can dramatically reduce whale strikes — and pollution as well.

An orca whale breaching off the coast of British Columbia, Canada.

Noisy waters are bad news for the orcas of the Pacific Northwest

Environment

The waters of the Pacific Northwest are busy and noisy, which is bad news for orcas. The endangered whales are having to “yell” to make their calls heard over all the marine traffic, which means more energy used, more food needed and even more stress on the orca population.

Blue whales are the largest creatures that have ever lived. They were hunted to near extinction in the 20th century and have only recovered since to perhaps 10% of their pre-whaling numbers, but new research has found that the Northeastern Pacific populat

Here’s the green success story of the California blue whale

Environment

A new study of blue whales in the eastern Pacific has found that the population of the behemoths there has bounced back to near pre-whaling levels. But other populations of blues elsewhere are not doing nearly as well.