Featured microdoc:
The once and future gray whales
How do you estimate gray whale
populations from a time before
anyone
knew they existed?
Breaking news in sustainability
Gray whales are thought to have recovered from whaling with current numbers around 20,000. But we only started counting these animals after whaling began, so how can we know for sure how many there used to be?
Written into the DNA of gray whales are clues that can tell us the size of past populations. Large populations have more genetic variation than small ones. The level of variation in gray whale DNA suggests that these whales actually numbered 100,000 in the past, and not 20,000 as we previously thought. What does this mean for the gray whale and the ecosystem they live in?
2-4 minute microdocs on sustainability
