At the time, there were fewer than 10,000 blue whales in the oceans, and the unnatural loss of even one blue whale in the western North Atlantic would threaten the population’s recovery. Scientists estimate that we killed 360,000 blue whales in the first six decades of the twentieth century. I cannot begin to understand this loss—what a world with 360,000 blue whales looked like—just as I cannot understand the vastness of the blue whale, whose tongue weighs as much as an elephant, or how any human might believe themselves powerful enough to kill one.
