The study said numbers of minke were slightly more difficult to calculate because of a “data deficiency” around the “scientific” whaling undertaken by Japan.
A Japanese whaling fleet that spent the Antarctic summer in the southern ocean this year killed more than 300 whales.
“We have tied the krill to primary productivity and we have tied the whales to the krill,” Tulloch said.
Tulloch said the modelling did not consider other climate-related factors, like ocean acidity, declining sea ice and warming surface temperatures.
The last two are predicted to have an impact on blue whale numbers in particular and will be looked at in a later study.
The catch data ran from 1890 to 2012 and included more than two million records detailing the species and location of the catch.
Tulloch said that of the species in the study, only the southern right whale was hunted extensively before 1900 and information about the numbers caught was scant. »