Not fast enough for whalers
Previous Population and DistributionPrior to the invention of the steam engine, whalers were unable to match the amazing speed of the fin whale, and they were largely saved from commercial whaling. That all changed in the early 20th Century, and the global fin whale population was quickly reduced by commercial whaling. Almost 750,000 fin whales were reportedly killed in the Southern Hemisphere between 1904 and 1979 - almost half of these in a single decade in the 1950s.
Current Population and Distribution
The fin whale has a global distribution, occurring in the north Pacific, north Atlantic, Indian and Arctic Oceans, as well as in the Mediterranean. In the North Pacific, fin whales are found in the Bering and Chukchi Seas, and along the coast of Alaska while in the North Atlantic, they can be seen around Canada, Greenland, Iceland, northern Norway, Spitsbergen and the Barents Sea. They are relatively rare in tropical or iced polar seas. In areas of the southern hemisphere where the species was once hunted intensively, they are rarely encountered today.
The total population in the North Atlantic probably exceeds 46,000.