In sustainability terms there is a world of difference between the life-cycles of say, the Blue Whale and the Atlantic Cod.
There used to be something like 200,000 to 300,000 Blue Whales in the Antarctic there are now estimated to be 5000 – 12,000 in all the oceans of the world. When commercial whaling of Blue Whale was banned in 1966 they were on the brink of extinction and over the last forty odd years it is unclear if the world population has increased significantly or even remained stable.
Blue Whales are mammals, and as mammals they take a long time to reach sexual maturity, typically five to ten years, they breed slowly with a female only having a single calf (sometimes two) every two or three years and that calf is dependant on its mother for the first year of its life. It is estimated that they can live for eighty years (nobody is sure but the oldest known with any certainty is thirty-five).
It is possible for Atlantic Cod to recover much more quickly from commercial fishing however due to over-fishing many populations are close to collapse and it is possible that a change in the balance of their specific eco-system may have occurred that will prevent stocks ever recovering even if all commercial fishing was suspended indefinitely.
Man…..the hunter. :rolleyes:
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