“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded
creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part,” wrote Herman
Melville in Moby Dick. Today, we no
longer dread whales, but their subtlety remains. “For a long time, whales have
been considered too rare to make much of a difference in the oceans,” notes
University of Vermont conservation biologist Joe Roman. That was a mistake.