Four decades after the last commercial whaling vessel left the southeastern Atlantic, blue and fin whales are cautiously reappearing in waters off Namibia and South Africa — a fragile echo of populations that industrial hunting nearly silenced forever. Researchers at the University of Cape Town, analyzing sixty years of sightings and strandings, find that the overwhelming majority of encounters have occurred since 2012, suggesting that protection, given enough time, can begin to reverse even catastrophic loss. Yet the Antarctic blue whale lingers at just three percent of its former abundance,