Blue Whales

It seems that the eastern North Pacific population of blue whales has recovered to its pre-hunting totals–about 2200.

2200 animals makes it pretty easy to drive an animal to extinction. I was just talking about the Pleistocene extinctions with my students and saying that the enormous size of the American megafauna made it pretty bloody easy for them to die off entirely when the combination of the end of the Ice Ages and the arrival of humans hit them. After all, how many beavers the size of the modern black bear can a forest support?