How many whales exist worldwide? Species by species if you know.?

Question

somewhere there has to be an estimate. I just haven't found it

Answer 1

The International Whaling Commission has a listing of whale species and their estimated population size:

http://www.iwcoffice.org/conservation/es...

It does not list all whale species and some of the estimates are not well sourced. (I've never seen the gray whale estimated at 30,000, even at their highest levels in the past 20 years.)

On the other end is the list on the Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cet...

Somewhere between those two is probably some sort of accuracy.

Answer 2

it is impossible to calculate, although some whales are endangered species, that have small enough populations that can be counted, there are several species of whales that have a very abundant population, and cannot be recorded.