Looking at the numbers, the whales hit a peak population in 2016 and then had a die off from mal nutrition and are back to just above their 1960 population. Their life cycle is about 50 to 60 years, so one would think the numbers would be much higher than what they got too. Just a guess, but I have a feeling that their maximum sustainable number must be somewhere between the 13426 in 1960 and the 26960 in 2016. If they could sustain higher numbers, one would think that being protected their number would have more than doubled in 56 years.