Viewing / tourism (2010s band)
TicketedSafari, hide, cage-dive or parade tickets in the 2010s often sat in the tens to hundreds of USD per person -- a dated band, not a live quote.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Speed33
Intelligence67
Range93
Resilience30
Cultural impact76
Ecological role91
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Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
Are blue whales recovering like some humpbacks?
Some Northern Hemisphere stocks look better. Antarctic blues remain far below pre-whaling. EN is still the honest card.
What did 1966 change?
The IWC protected blue whales after the factory-ship years had already taken the Antarctic majority. Protection was a lock on an empty room in the south.
Is the 1982 moratorium a blue-whale law?
It is a commercial-whaling pause for many species. Blues were already protected; the moratorium is the political weather that kept factory ships from a sequel.
Why ecological role near the top?
A blue whale eats tonnes of krill and returns nutrients in faecal plumes; a fall feeds the benthos. In this atlas that pump outranks most terrestrial carnivores except elephants and wolves.
Did Roger Payne study blues?
Payne whale-song fame is mostly humpback. Blue-whale acoustics (low-frequency pulses) are a later Navy-and-NOAA file.
What is a pygmy blue whale?
A southern subspecies/form -- smaller, still EN, often confused in catch histories.
IUCN: Endangered
Money around the blue whale is regional even when the brand is global.
Figures are dated educational bands -- not live quotes and not a buying guide.
Encounter bands
Conflict / livestock loss
Local & episodicPredation and crop-raid compensation schemes (US, Kenya, India) published per-head bands that changed with election cycles.
Fishery / take value
CommodityWhere the type is a catch (tuna, salmon, fugu), 2000s-2020s ex-vessel or auction bands were the political number -- not a supermarket tag.
Captive / zoo husbandry
InstitutionalAnnual keep for a large mammal or a specialist bird in AZA/EAZA reports ran to five or six figures USD in the 2010s.
Enforcement / reserve ops
PublicRanger, observer and census costs are socialised; they do not appear on a viewing ticket.
Regions
North America
ESA listings, Parks Canada, Alaska runs and Churchill buggies are the English-language field the localLens keeps returning to.
United Kingdom and Ireland
RSPB, NatureScot, reintroductions and a dense NGO press shape how this atlas type is taught in British English.
European Union / wider Europe
Habitats Directive, IWC delegations and returning wolves sit beside UK practice without being identical.
Range-state core
The biological centre of the blue whale -- often not English-speaking -- still writes the Red List.
Australia and New Zealand
DOC, Phillip Island, Taiaroa Head and kakapo-style ICU projects are the southern English conservation dialect.
Global trade desks
CITES, ICCAT, IWC and auction houses price the animal whether or not a local language has a word for it.
Key range numbers
33Atlas speed
30Atlas resilience
76Atlas cultural impact
91Atlas ecological role
Field programmes
IWC
1966 protection and 1982 moratorium.
NOAA Fisheries
US stocks, ships, acoustics.
CCAMLR
Krill overlap in the south.
British Antarctic Survey
Southern remnant surveys.
IUCN Cetacean SG
EN card.
Whale-watch ports
California viewing economy on a healthier stock.
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