The Southern Ocean encircling Antarctica is the world’s largest feeding ground for baleen whales — species like humpbacks that filter tiny organisms from seawater for food. In the 20th century, whalers killed roughly 2 million large whales in the Southern Ocean. Some populations, like the Antarctic blue whale, were reduced by more than 99 percent and have been struggling to recover, even though most nations ended commercial whaling in the mid-1980s.
Today a new threat is emerging: industrial fishing for Antarctic krill — tiny swimming crustaceans, roughly 2 inches (60 millimeters) long. In a newly published study, colleagues and I found that competition with this burgeoning fishery may impede whales’ recovery.
