Open Endings: The Eastern North Pacific Gray Whale Unusual Mortality Event, 1999-2000

By taking a cross-disciplinary approach, I address the ways in which scientific knowledge changes over time and what the implications of this might be for the management of marine mammal populations. [...]I consider what this shifting knowledge might mean for more popular understandings and, in turn, the ways wider societal perceptions are reflected in specialist research and co-shape representations of gray whales. Yet there is a more positive view of the gray whale's future. Since 1972, in the USA the gray whale has been protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which recognises marine mammals' roles in healthy ecosystems and prohibits hunting, harming, capturing or killing them (Marine Mammal Commission 2015b, 3). Scammon himself states his estimates were based on data he was "able to obtain," emphasising that he could not access certain records, which renders his calculations inaccurate (1874, 23; my emphasis). [...]logbooks provide an unreliable picture of the actual number of animals killed by whalers. Bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) and all three populations of right whales (Eubalaena) were also granted total protection; see Lotze (2015, 19). Since the establishment of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 1946, the ban on commercial hunting of gray whales has been upheld. 3.