and also why were they hunted? and did the fish population increase because there were a lot less whales and what did this do to the ecosystem?
212581
The humpback whale is a whale most famous for its singing. Whales (mostly sperm whales) were hunted for their oil which could be used for light, make up, and other things. Once petrolium (crude oil) was discovered, whaling was no longer necessary. Whaling was then banned because of its effects on the environment. Fish populations were affected, but we also liked to catch those. If we did not stop hunting whales, then many species would now be extinct.
259815
Pollution and DDT can cause poor environments.  All the oil and logging industries causes detriment to fishing of salmon for eagles.  As civilization expands their habitat shrinks.
117282
I'm no expert, but someone might have slaughtered a whale on you land and meant to write "marine whale oil". Watch your step. I don't know if you use slabs or what in your area, but it is safe to dig I would think. Let us know if there be whales there!
658014
Sustainable hunting of whales may traditionally be part of Japanese culture, but not the widespread slaughter of a remnant population using enormous factory ships with grenade tipped harpoons.  Already Japan is increasing the number of animals it kills for its farcical 'scientific research' which is simply a loop hole which allows Japan to kill whales for meat (of wich there are already stockpiles).\nAnd just because somethings part of a culture doesn't mean its good or should be continued or has some automatic validation. Killing whales may be part of Japanese heritage but the very existence and survival of whales is part of the Earths (and therefore every single persons) natural Heritage.
129005
Killer Whales are very complicated creature and our biologist and scientist are yet to understand it fully.\n\nThis is Dolphin family.\n\nWhen a group, it is very ferocious to all the water species that includes even Sharks and some times Blue Whales.\n\nIt marches in the sea in a group of about 40 Killer Whales called school of Whales. During that time, it tarments and kills all who come across or confront with it.\n\nThe biggest strength of Killer Whales are its speed and acrobatic swimming skills.\n\nAs for as the defence machanism is concern, it can easily escape from any velunarable situation by its speed.\n\nIt is a friendly species of human being. There is no data that a Killer whale attacked a human being.
107942
First of all, to the guy that says "there's more fish in the sea", that's crap. The problem is what's the use of fishing if the water is contaminated. Second of all, GROW UP!! There are way more tougher things in life that your gonna have to accept.
297663
There are several reasons:\n1. They are competing with livestock for land\n2. Droughts, so they cannot get water\n3. Habitat loss\nGrevy's zebras are not allowed to be hunted, but they were.
502688
Natural selection.  Since competition was low, and food was so abundant...the bigger the better.  Also, if you were bigger you could kill smaller things or defend yourself from something that wanted to eat you.  Mammals were favored to remain small during that time because competition would have been too high with all the huge dinosaurs around.  After they died out, mammals had a free world to investigate, and some of them got very large as a result. (Mammoth, Mastadon, Rhinocerous, Giant Ground Sloth, etc.)  It's all about evolution.
596369
Not fully documented but at the last count there were more than 80 species of whales, dolphins and porpoises.
633424
Yes...It was a foul , they should stick to hunting whales.
523741
Because of the motor boats. The fans of motor boats cut the manatees, and they died from the injuries.
583872
Because animals in that area existed in abundance, and there were no natural predators other than man, of which they had a natural fear. Men did not need to overhunt the megafauna in Africa as they did in North America. Moreover, since men had arrived only recently in America, megafauna on the American continent had no fear of them and were much easier to hunt as a result.\n\nAnother theory says that the megafauna of America were driven to extinction by climate change. Apparently the climate change during the Late Pleistocene that may have driven North American animals to extinction was not as severe in Africa.\n\nA newer theory states that disease that spread through America but not Africa was to blame, but the offending microbes, if they indeed existed, have yet to be isolated or identified.
457692
Fishing. The Grand Banks were the richest fishing grounds in the world at that time.\n\nThe settlers wiped out the Beothucks, which sort of wrecked their economy. Not that they really had one -- they were hunter/gatherers.
158845
On July 2, 1992, Canada's fisheries minister banned fishing for cod off the northeast coast of Newfoundland and off the southern half of Labrador. The northern cod stock, once one of the richest in the world, had collapsed.\n\nThe moratorium on northern cod marked the beginning of an unprecedented disaster for virtually all of Canada's Atlantic groundfisheries the fisheries for species that feed near the ocean floor. Nineteen-ninety-three saw dramatic reductions in the allowable catches of cod in the northern part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the closure of the cod fisheries off Newfoundland's south coast, Nova Scotia's east coast, and in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. With the following years came further reductions and new moratoria, not only on cod but also on redfish (ocean perch), white hake, American plaice, turbot (Greenland halibut), and witch flounder.\n\nDespite the fishing bans, many stocks continued to decline, setting new historical lows year after year. Cod populations dropped to one one hundredth of their former sizes. In 1997, fishing for twenty-two stocks remained prohibited; most other groundfish stocks supported only severely limited fishing (Canada 1997, 79-82). In 1998, the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council, responsible for advising the fisheries minister on catch levels, expressed "surprise," "alarm," and "dismay" over the status of several stocks and projected further declines, even in the absence of any fishery (FRCC 1998b, 5-12). The council warned, "the outlook as described by scientists is even more bleak than at the beginning of the moratorium" (FRCC 1998a, 5). Some scientists worried that the worst hit stocks might never fully recover.\n\nThe collapse of the Atlantic groundfish was more than an ecological disaster: It was also an economic disaster. Groundfish landings in the 1980s had an average landed value of $345 million and a processed value of considerably more.\n\nAccording to Gus Etchegary, former chairman of the Fisheries Council of Canada and former president of Newfoundland's largest fishing and processing company, if catches off Newfoundland and Labrador had not declined in the previous twenty-five years, by 1997 they would have had an annual export value of $3 billion\n\nishery closures, throwing 40,000 fishermen and fish processors out of work, created social and economic chaos throughout Atlantic Canada, where half of the region's 1,300 fishing communities depend entirely on the fisheries for their existence (Auditor 1997, 14-9). In the words of Earle McCurdy, president of the Fish, Food, and Allied Workers union, "What we have is not an adjustment problem, but the most wrenching societal upheaval since the Great Depression. Our communities are in crisis. The people of the fishery are in turmoil" (Harris 1998, i).\n\nThe moratoria hit Newfoundland especially hard. The province has always depended on cod fishing. Cod inspired its first settlements, posts where English merchants salted and dried cod before shipping it to Europe. For centuries, fishing was Newfoundland's only major industry; it has remained the province's most important primary industry. Many communities have known nothing but fishing and fish processing. And many are prepared for nothing else: 83 percent of the province's fishermen have not graduated from secondary school, and more than a third have not attended any secondary school at all (Auditor 1997, 14-10). Former fisheries minister John Crosbie described Newfoundland's special relationship with cod:\n\n    Through the centuries, the northern cod was the economic foundation for the settlement and growth of communities along the east coast of Newfoundland and the coast of Labrador. Without the abundant fish stocks, there would have been no Newfoundland as a British colony, a British dominion, or, after 1949, a province of Canada. . . . Cod was the reason why Newfou
480885
Changing a small thing in the environment has a HUGE impact.  And everything in nature is a balance.  (Read on for a better explanation, but first...)\n\nOk, I read this last year so forgive me if my memory is incorrect.  But this is the story where the wolf is killed, which allows the deer to take over the mountain, which ultimately means the destruction of the mountain.\n\nEverything has a purpose.  Nature is a balance.  It is the wolf's job to keep the deer in proper number.  Without the wolf, the deer become over-abundant.  This leads to more plants being eaten by the deer because there are more deer.  Then, because more plants are being eaten, there is not enough plant-life to maintain the increase in deer.  So the deer begin to die or move on because there is not enough food for them to eat.\n\nFrom the perspective of a human, the wolf is just a threat.  But from the perspective of the mountain, the wolf is a necessary part to keep everything in balance and to keep everything alive.
5040
Probably they had taken a lot more meat than us. Eating meat does grow your brain. Predators do have bigger brains than preys.\n\nTheir brains are bigger because of the need to calculate the risk and to overtake the preys. Cro Magnons had bigger cranial capacities could have been because they desperately need food especially meat to survive the weather. Their physiques had to adapt the condition and made them tacticians.\n\nCro Magnons maybe were smarter than us in surviving the harsh condition of the world bare-handed but I think that they they were no smarter than us in using tools or making great tools. It's like native humans or jungle people or whoever who lives in the wilderness who can bear harsh environment bare-handed compared to us living in cities with great facilities but lack experience in handling harsh conditions bare-handed.
430871
Jenny Joanna is right.  Higher humidity, air more dense, better transmission of sound waves.\n\nGo to the extreme, whales can communicate hundreds of miles through the ocean.