More or less?

According to a new Stanford-University of Washington study, the gray whale population has not actually rebounded from commercial whaling. I wonder. I have to admit that it's pretty cool that they can extrapolate that from genetic data.

One of the arguments for subsistence whaling by the Makah is that the gray whale population is at or near its carrying capacity, the largest number that the ecosystem can support. If these new data turn out to be reliable, that kind of undercuts that argument. Still, hunting bowheads in Alaska is not that controversial anymore, compared to 25 years ago, and the bowhead population is much more precarious than the gray whale population. It's also worth remembering that earlier academic estimates of the bowhead population were way off, which became clear when local experts participated in the bowhead census on the North Slope. In any case, in this learned non-biologist's opinion, aboriginal subsistence hunting doesn't make a significant dent in the gray whale or bowhead whale populations, especially compared with newer threats like climate change and overfishing, both key factors mentioned in the study.