In the 20th century, more than two million whales were hunted, threatening several species with extinction. This visualization highlights the scale of this exploitation by tracing the catches of the six most hunted whale species and situating them in the context of regulatory policies implemented over time.
The steamgraph used in this visualization, with its organic curves reminiscent of the wakes of whaling ships, follows a vertical timeline from top to bottom, with each wake representing the catches of a species over several decades. This approach provides a clear understanding of the rise of industrial whaling, which reached its peak in the 1960s, when more than 80,000 whales were killed each year. Since the blue whale is the largest animal to have ever lived on Earth, a scale of the species’ size relative to each other is included in the background of the visualization, showing the relative size of a whale compared to a human, highlighting the dramatic scale of whaling practices.
At the same time, the visualization analyzes the evolution of regulatory efforts. It highlights the failures of early protection policies and the late implementation of the 1986 moratorium, which was introduced at a time when whale populations were already severely depleted. This moratorium marked a crucial turning point in international protection, signaling a renewed commitment to preserving these majestic creatures.
*Data from : https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/whale-catch, published by Rocha et al. (2014) & the International Whaling Commission (IWC)