A Basic Premise of Animal Conservation Looks Shakier Than Ever

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Sperm whales live in the remote open ocean. Or at least, that’s what scientists have long thought. The U.S. government’s 2010 recovery plan for sperm whales characterizes their range as “generally offshore.” A 2016 study of their Australian range describes the whales as foraging in “deep offshore areas of the world’s oceans.” This understanding goes way back. In Moby-Dick, published in 1851, the whaling ship Pequod chases sperm whales far from shore, days from port.

But that doesn’t mean sperm whales to restrict themselves to the open ocean. A that looks at records from the heyday of “”—1792 to 1912—found that sperm whales used to hang out much closer to the coast. Though sperm whales need deep water to hunt for food, they abandoned areas near the coast because that’s the first place humans hunted them out. “We