The 2025 whale hunt season in Norway finished with 428 minke whales killed, up from 414 in 2024.
Norway’s government still objects to global ban on whaling despite little demand for whale meat, and had increased the total number of whales allowed to be killed by hunters to 1,406 individuals.
I was reading the story on Whale and Dolphin Conservation’s winter 2025 Issue 112, and thought to create this data visualisation because I wanted to see what 428 minke whales look like as “data on paper” - I simply cannot picture them in real life. And I had to resize and resize again until the whale graphic look like a tiny fish in order to fit them all on the canvas.
I couldn’t believe this was the same country where we bobbed up and down in the icy waters of the beautiful fjords, admiring the whales gliding and swirling around the gigantic shimmering herring bait ball that dwarfed their own sizes. I remember my heart pounding and my mask filling up with tears of awe as we watched orcas and humpbacks hunting side by side.
Stories and memories flooded in.
I recall the resident sperm whale in Dominica being tangled in some fishing net and eventually died due to the extensive injury and the whole family disappeared from sight for weeks after.
I recall the juvenile humpback called Sweet Girl in French Polynesia who was tragically killed by a ship strike, and my uncontrollable tears upon seeing her completely disfigured in a video - a stranger that I never met yet her pain made my heart ache as if it were my own.
I recall the joy from gliding next to sperm whales and humpbacks, the tears from my shaky heart, and the seconds when our eyes met, time dragging on as if frozen. Their majestic, mesmerising presence and grace never fail to touch me, and so many others.
It takes just one of them, a single whale, to change one’s connection with the ocean.
I am biased, probably, but I really think there are alternatives to this mass slaughtering of whales and dolphins that only exist in a few countries now. I also don’t understand how we get to a point where it is forbidden to be in the water with those animals in some countries, while in others they are being slaughtered in hundreds to make dog food!!!
Surely we have other options?