Dedicated Antarctic Blue Whale Project voyages
Three dedicated Southern Ocean voyages under the IWC-SORP Antarctic Blue Whale Project add 119 photo-identified whales to the Antarctic Blue Whale Catalogue, bringing it to 552 individuals. The catalogue is what makes a capture-recapture abundance estimate possible for a subspecies that is otherwise almost invisible - too few, too dispersed and too far from any coast for conventional survey coverage.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- IWC Southern Ocean Research Partnership · research programme · Southern Ocean · not located
- Photo-Identification Cataloguing · process · Applied wherever blue whales are surveyed · not located
- Antarctic Blue Whale (B. m. intermedia) · species · Southern Ocean and adjacent temperate South Atlantic, Indian and Pacific sectors · not located
- Southern Ocean · maritime region · Circumpolar, south of roughly 40°S · not located
Evidence
Verified — Every field is supported by a cited authoritative source.
Capture-recapture estimates of Antarctic blue whale abundance and population growth rate
A POPAN superpopulation estimate from Antarctic blue whale photo-identification collected between 2003/04 and 2018/19 gives 3,506 whales (95% CI 2,107-5,832), with abundance in the final study year, 2018/19, estimated at 1,817 (95% CI lower bound 714); SORP voyages in 2013, 2015 and 2019 added 119 individuals to an Antarctic Blue Whale Catalogue totalling 552. V55 verification basis: these figures were returned in the search result carrying the published abstract text and attributed to this paper.
Marine Mammal Science (Wiley); Olson and colleagues · 2025 · Verified
Marine Mammal Science; doi:10.1111/mms.13215; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mms.13215
Recorded on IWC Southern Ocean Research Partnership
- Whaling begins at Grytviken, South Georgia
- The factory ship Lancing takes a stern slipway south
- The Antarctic blue whale catch reaches its all-time peak
- The heaviest blue whale on record is weighed
- Soviet fleets take protected whales and file false returns
- Whaling ends at South Georgia
- The IWC protects blue whales from commercial hunting
- CCAMLR is agreed at Canberra
- The commercial whaling moratorium takes effect
- The Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary is adopted
- A long-term decline in krill density is linked to winter sea ice
- Dedicated Antarctic Blue Whale Project voyages
- CCAMLR adopts the Ross Sea marine protected area
- Blue whales are found back at South Georgia
- Baleen whale consumption is re-measured, and the krill paradox sharpens
- The only published Antarctic blue whale satellite tracks are released as data
- Antarctic sea ice reaches a record low, a year after the previous one
- Antarctic meltwater is projected to slow the abyssal cell
- A physics-based early warning signal is proposed
- A capture-recapture abundance estimate for Antarctic blue whales is published
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- An individual Antarctic blue whale is re-sighted at South Georgia · 2026
- A capture-recapture abundance estimate for Antarctic blue whales is published · 2025
- A physics-based early warning signal is proposed · 2024-02
- The only published Antarctic blue whale satellite tracks are released as data · 2023
- Antarctic sea ice reaches a record low, a year after the previous one · 2023-02
- Antarctic meltwater is projected to slow the abyssal cell · 2023
- Baleen whale consumption is re-measured, and the krill paradox sharpens · 2021-11
- Blue whales are found back at South Georgia · 2020-02