In 1893, the World\u2019s Fair was getting under way in Chicago, the world\u2019s first number plates appeared on cars in Paris, and Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination would later spark the first world war, spent time hunting kangaroos and emus in the NSW town of Narromine.<\/p>\n
Also, according to researchers, up to 10% of southern right whales in existence could have still been swimming the ocean today, if not for other factors.<\/p>\n
The research, published in Science Advances, found southern rights lived to a median age of 73 years old, with up to 10% surviving past 131 years \u2013 as long as they avoided death due to industrial whaling, ship strike or entanglement.<\/p>\n
This made them the second-longest lived mammals on Earth, after bowhead whales \u2013 another baleen, or filter feeding species \u2013 which could live beyond two centuries.<\/p>\n
The age of bowheads, based on laboratory techniques, was also supported by archaeological evidence. This included one individual, taken in the modern Indigenous hunt in 2007, which still had an explosive Yankee Whaler harpoon tip, last manufactured in 1885, embedded in its blubber.<\/p>\n
Co-author of the research Dr Peter Corkeron, an adjunct senior research fellow at Griffith University, said whales alive today could have been around during Australia\u2019s convict days, if they reached their full lifespan.<\/p>\n
They would have endured a bloodbath. \u201cIndustrial whaling, which for most species ended only 60 years ago, would have required any individuals now aged over 100 years to have survived at least 40 years of intense whaling,\u201d the paper said. \u201cAny individual over 150 would have had to survive 90 years of the same intense hunt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead of techniques that analysed the ear plugs or eyes of dead animals, the study estimated the lifespans of southern and North Atlantic right whales by modelling their patterns of their survival, drawing on global and South African databases that tracked re-sightings of individual whales over more than 40 years.<\/p>\n
Right whales have unique textured patches called callosities on their noses, or \u201crostrum\u201d, that meant individuals could be identified in photos decades apart. For example, one North Atlantic right whale that died in the mid-1990s, after being hit by a ship, was traced back to a photograph from the 1930s, Corkeron said.<\/p>\n
Geographe Marine Research chair, Dr Capri Jolliffe, a marine mammal scientist who was not involved with the research, said whales had long life histories and long memories.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhaling didn\u2019t cease that long ago. There\u2019s whales out there today that were alive during whaling times, so they probably have that memory of being hunted by humans,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Right whales took their name from being \u201cthe right whale to hunt\u201d, Jolliffe said. They were an easy target, being \u201cquite chunky\u201d and spending a lot of time at the surface.<\/p>\n
As a result, their populations had been decimated, she said. Three species \u2013 North Atlantic, North Pacific and Southern right whales \u2013 were endangered globally, and remained at risk from entanglement in fishing nets, ship strike, noise, pollutants and climate change.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very lucky in Australia,\u201d Jolliffe said. \u201cWe have southern right whales that migrate to our coastline every year\u201d.<\/p>\n
They foraged in productive Antarctic waters and migrated north to give birth in sheltered, warmer waters along the Australian southern coast, where babies played together while the mums rested, she said.<\/p>\n
Commercial whaling ceased in Australia in 1979 and was banned by the International Whaling Commission in the late 1980s. In decades since, some populations of southern right whales have slowly recovered.<\/p>\n
The estimated lifespans of North Atlantic right whales revealed a \u201cdifferent, sadder tale\u201d, Corkeron said. Their median lifespan was \u201cabout a third of what it should be\u201d at 22 years, he said, and was artificially limited by human causes such as vessel strike and entanglement.<\/p>\n
Whale scientist Dr Vanessa Pirotta said whales were long-lived animals \u201cjust like us\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe good news is that whaling in most areas around the world has stopped,\u201d she said, but some species such as North Atlantic right whales were not recovering, making research into their biology and lifespans \u201cincredibly timely\u201d and critically important to their conservation.<\/p>\n
Corkeron said whaling had artificially changed the age structure of right whale populations \u2013 by removing larger, older animals \u2013 contributing to the \u201cmisplaced view\u201d that they only lived to their 70s.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were thinking about these whales all wrong,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s impeded our ability to get it right when it comes to doing the science for conservation to stop these whales from going extinct.\u201d<\/p>\n