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History of Whaling
For hundreds of years, humans hunted whales for their oil, meat, and baleen. Whale oil lit lamps before electricity was invented. By the 1960s, many whale species were nearly extinct — blue whales were reduced from about 350,000 to fewer than 1,000! In 1986, the International Whaling Commission banned commercial whaling. Since then, many whale populations have been slowly recovering. But it takes a long time — blue whales live about 90 years and have only one calf every 2 to 3 years.