South Georgia
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A sub-Antarctic island in the South Atlantic, about 165 km long, that was the centre of Southern Hemisphere land-based whaling and is now one of the clearest recovery signals for the species. Industrial whaling operating from the island between 1904 and 1971 killed 42,698 blue whales there. The effect was near-total local extirpation: over 34,000 km of systematic survey effort between 1998 and 2018 produced a single blue whale sighting. Then a February 2020 survey recorded 58 blue whale sightings from 2,430 km of visual effort, with 23 individuals photo-identified. The same waters, a century apart, are the before and after of the whole story.
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Evidence · 2
Timeline
No dated observations are stored for this object. Atlas shows what was observed and when — it does not infer a history.
Connections · 1
- Southern Oceanadjacent_to
Assembled narrative · 1
An assembled narrative is available for this object.
Observed changes · 0
No public Signals are attached to this object. Signals show what changed and when it was observed — never a direction or a rank.
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