Ancient mariners Great whales can live more than 100 years - if we let them

In Moby-Dick, Herman Melville's epic novel of 1851, the author asks if whales would survive the remorseless human hunt.

- Philip Hoare

In Moby-Dick, Herman Melville's epic novel of 1851, the author asks if whales would survive the remorseless human hunt. Yes, he says, as he foresees a flooded world in which the whale would outlive us and "spout his frothed defiance to the skies".

Moby Dick was a grizzled old sperm whale that had miraculously survived the harpoons. But a new scientific paper is set to prove that whales are capable of living for a very long time.

The paper, published in the journal Science Advances, suggests that the industrial hunting of great whales, including sperm, blue, fin and right whales, masked the ability of these underwater giants to live to great ages.

It has been known since the 1990s that Arctic bowhead whales, with their slow metabolism enabled by cold waters and plentiful food, can reach 200 years old or more, as indicated by carbon-tips found embedded in bowheads that had survived earlier hunts.

But the new study indicates the same lifespans may apply to right and fin whales. The first scientific reports of "extraordinary longevity" came when researchers examined the earplugs of fin and blue whales hunted by Japanese whalers in the late 1970s. By counting the annual growth layers of the plugs, they discovered that animals thought to live up to 70 years were at least 114 years old.