Subject: Blue Whale 

Somebody with knowledge of whale populations off India and Sri Lanka
coastline - please post additional info. This is from ongoing IWC meeting in
Monaco.
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Blue whales, the largest mammals on earth, may be rallying from
near-extinction but it will be years before anyone can be certain, scientists
say. The International Whaling Commission (IWC), which is holding its annual
meeting in Monaco, estimates around 460 blue whales live in the southern
oceans, based on a study completed in 1991. A few hundred more may live in
the northern hemisphere. ``There are probably fewer than 1,000 left,'' said
Sidney Holt, a marine biologist at the International League for the
Protection of Cetaceans. ``They're so rare, they're hardly ever seen.'' In a
recent 10-year study of their population, only 30 blue whales were spotted
even though they need to surface often, taking breaths every two minutes on
average, he said. At the start of the century, there were probably 250,000
blue whales, which can measure more than 35 metres (100 feet). ``It's very
difficult to find out if whale stocks are increasing or decreasing. It will
probably be another 10-15 years before we know if blue whales are increasing
or not,'' said Holt, a longtime adviser to the scientific committee. ``The
rarer and more dispersed whales are, the less accurately they can be counted.
The large whales have been protected from hunters for three decades.
Pollution, depletion of the ozone layer and ultraviolet radiation pose the
biggest threats today. The blue is a member of the balleen, or toothless,
whale family. Of the balleen whales, which feed mainly on tiny shrimp, the
only abundant species is the minke. 

The IWC estimates there are around 760,000 minke, which are hunted today
despite a 1982 moratorium on commercial whaling pending a study of whale
stocks. Over 1,000 minke were killed in the past 12 months. ``The only whales
we know have been increasing are the grey whales and bowhead whales,'' Holt
said. The other family of large whales are the toothed whales, the biggest of
which is the sperm whale. Scientists say sperm whales are hard to track
because they surface less often than balleen whales. They can dive miles
below the ocean surface, staying down for up to one hour at a time. 

FWD from Reuters Web