Bowhead whales have the greatest life-span of any mammal on Earth. They can reach over 200 years in age thanks in part to their slow metabolism and cancer-suppressing genes.

They are far stockier and shorter than other large baleen whales, making them perfectly adapted to life among Arctic sea ice. Their bodies are dark, verging on black. The only exception to this is the front part of their lower lips, which shines brilliant white.

For many thousands of years, bowhead whales have helped maintain stable Arctic marine food webs. For millennia, they have served as a vital food source for Inuit communities, who harvest them sustainably in spring and autumn during their seasonal migration.

Then commercial whaling arrived in the Arctic in the 1500s. For nearly 400 years, tens of thousands of whaling ships from Europe and North America travelled to the Arctic. Over this time, whalers killed over 250,000 bowhead whales.

These slow-moving giants were the most profitable whale to hunt, having the longest baleen of any whale, which was fashioned into women’s corsets and other textiles. Their bodies yielded the most blubber, which when rendered into oil, illuminated winter nights in cities across Europe and North America.

By the time bowhead whaling was abandoned around 1914, there were likely fewer than 4,000 whales left. More than a century later, only two of their four........

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