Commercial shipping traffic around the southern point of Africa has quadrupled since December 2023, a direct consequence of escalating imperialist conflicts in the Middle East. This surge now poses a grave new threat to whale populations that had only recently begun to recover from centuries of industrial whaling.
Just last December, off the west coast of South Africa, Chris and Monique Fallows documented a humpback whale “supergroup” numbering 299 individuals. Chris Fallows, a wildlife photographer with 35 years of experience, described the sight as a “Manhattan skyline” of whale breath plumes. Monique Fallows, an author and naturalist, confirmed the count by photographing each whale's tail, or fluke. Alex Vogel, Africa coordinator for Happywhale, an organization maintaining a global whale database, stated this appears to be the largest group of humpback whales ever sighted.
Scientists confirm that this supergroup phenomenon signals a strong rebound for some whale species in the southern hemisphere. This recovery follows the international whale hunting ban, which came into effect 40 years ago in 1986. Humpback numbers have climbed from fewer than 10,000 at the peak of whaling to over 100,000 today, according to assessments by scientists and the International Whaling Commission. Els Vermeulen, chief scientist at the University of Pretoria’s Whale Unit, noted that humpback supergroups began reappearing around 2012, about 14 years ago, attributing this to the whaling moratorium. She called the moratorium “one of the strongest conservation success stories in the marine environment.”
The Cost of Imperial Ambition
This fragile recovery now faces a new assault from the relentless demands of global capital. Vermeulen’s recent preliminary assessment, co-authored by her, reveals the dramatic increase in shipping around South Africa. This rerouting is a direct response to the Israel-Hamas war and Houthi rebel attacks on ships in the Red Sea, further exacerbated by the ongoing Iran war and the security crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. These conflicts, driven by geopolitical and economic interests, force commercial vessels to take longer, more dangerous routes.
The consequences for marine life are immediate and brutal. Gregg Oelofse, coastal and environmental manager for Cape Town, confirmed the increased risk. He stated that more whales and more shipping inevitably lead to more collisions. Whale carcasses often wash ashore bearing the unmistakable marks of these encounters. “We’ll see the propellor strike often through the whale’s body,” Oelofse observed, describing “big cuts in the whale’s body.” Most whales killed by ships, however, sink, leaving no detailed statistics and obscuring the true scale of the destruction.
Capital's Unchecked Expansion
While humpbacks have seen a significant comeback, the World Wildlife Fund reports that recovery has been uneven across other whale species. Seven out of the 14 great whale species remain classified as endangered or vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The critically endangered North Atlantic right whales, for instance, number only around 380 individuals. Beyond collisions, entanglement in commercial fishing equipment and the broader impacts of climate change continue to threaten these populations, demonstrating the systemic nature of capital’s environmental toll.
Reform Efforts Against Systemic Greed
In response to this escalating crisis, Vermeulen and other scientists are lobbying for official speed limits for ships near the South African coast. This reformist proposal aims to give vessels more time to spot whales in their path, a band-aid solution against the backdrop of an economic system that prioritizes profit and uninterrupted trade routes over ecological survival. Such measures, while offering minor mitigation, fail to address the root causes: the wars that reroute shipping and the unregulated expansion of global capital that drives both conflict and environmental devastation.