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(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Humpback whales.
They live in every ocean,
traveling the high seas from
their polar feeding grounds
to the tropics, where they breed.
Yet whales have not always
enjoyed such freedom.
Once there were more then
100,000 humpbacks in the oceans,
but last century, they were
hunted to near extinction.
(gentle music)
Just a few thousand
survived the onslaught.
(dramatic music)
A huge public outcry finally led to a ban
on commercial whaling in 1986.
Since then, the number of humpback whales
has been steadily increasing.
(gentle music)
They're returning to their
ancestral feeding grounds,
like these off the coast of South Africa.
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They're gathering to take advantage
of a seasonal abundance of krill,
tiny shrimp-like crustaceans.
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The whales take in great
mouthfuls of water,
trapping the krill on
sieves of hairy bristles
that line their jaws.
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Each whale can eat over a ton a day.
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With food so plentiful, fur seals come
to claim their share.
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These extraordinary
scenes were unimaginable
just a few years ago.
(majestic music)
