One sea creature that has suffered extreme exploitation is the whale. Here’s the current status of some well-known whale species.

Bryde’s Whale Off Phi Phi Islands, Thailand (Author: Morningdew cc by-sa 3.0)

Whales are magnificent, extremely large, and generally gentle sea mammals. Different species of whales have lived in the Earths’ waters for millions of years now but they are now threatened due to excessive whaling and uneven climatic changes.

Specifically, unregulated and relentless hunting in past centuries led to a sharp decrease in the population of most species of whales.

In fact, in some of the more severe cases, the current population is just a mere fraction of the pre-whaling population.

Initially, commercial whalers were monitored by the International Whaling Commission (IWC).

However by 1986, due to the extreme depletion in the number of these creatures the IWC temporally banned whaling entirely.