The recoveries, the near-losses and the people working to turn the tide. What conservation success actually looks like, and how you can be part of it.
Work through them in order, or start wherever your curiosity takes you.
A century ago, we killed more than nine in every ten humpback whales on Earth. Today they fill the oceans with song again. Their recovery shows what is possible — and reminds us how much is still at stake for the whales left behind.
There are fewer vaquitas left on Earth than there are players on a football team. They are the smallest porpoise in the world, they live in one small corner of one sea, and they are drowning in nets set for a fish they have nothing to do with.
About a tenth of the ocean is now officially protected.
For a whale, a whale-watching boat is not a boat. It is an unfamiliar noise that arrives without warning, follows when you move, and does not leave when you dive. Whether that encounter is harmless or harmful depends almost entirely on choices made by people the whale will never see.
A research team can cover a stretch of coastline. It cannot cover an ocean. Whales, inconveniently, do not stay on the stretch of coastline. For decades this was simply the limit of what could be known — until someone noticed that thousands of people were already out on the water every day, looking at exactly the right things, for entirely different reasons.
Ready to begin? Start with the first lesson.
Start module 6