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THE first independent count of sperm whales suggests their plight is more desperate than we thought, with only 360,000 left. Estimates from the early 1980s put world numbers at 1.5 to 2 million, but they were based on commercial catches. “They didn’t make sense to those of us out studying the whales,” says Hal Whitehead at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. He pooled data from 10 studies carried out since commercial catches were banned in 1988. The new count makes a nonsense of the arguments from countries that claim the species has recovered enough for the ban to be lifted.…