Bertie Gregory

Yeah.

I think the key thing was that during the whaling era, whales, as I said, were hunted to the brink of extinction.

And I remember I visited this island in the South Atlantic called South Georgia, and that was sort of the epicenter for Southern Ocean whaling.

So that was where a lot of the whaling ships were based, and that's where they brought a lot of the whales they hunted in Antarctica back to, to process the blubber and all that stuff.

And I remember reading the logs from the whalers when they were there.

From the ships.

Exactly.

And they would talk about there being so many whales in these bays that they were hunting in that you could have walked across their backs.

Just like mind-boggling numbers of whales.

And that got me thinking.

I found that really depressing.

And like, oh, I'll like...

That's all gone.

I'll never get to see that.

But then, however many decades on, the world came together and protected whales in the 70s.

And now, what's that, 50, 60 years on from that ban, the whales are starting to make a comeback.

And of course, they're not even close to what their original numbers were, but

The idea that you can now go to Antarctica and see these biblically large gatherings of whales.

I go around the world.

I realize I'm super fortunate to see animals doing amazing things, but everywhere I go, the guide, the scientist, the local person, they always say, what you've seen on this expedition you've just done is amazing, but you should have seen how much more amazing it was 10, 20, 30 years ago.