August 14, 2025 — Thirteen years ago, the Main Hawaiian Islands’ dwindling population of false killer whales was officially declared endangered, a move intended to help their numbers recover after years of getting hooked and tangled in nets, mostly set by nearshore commercial fishers.
But instead of rebounding, a new report finds, the vulnerable group has only continued to shrink at a troubling pace.
The report, published Thursday in the journal Endangered Species Research, estimates that the unique population of false killer whales inhabiting the waters around the main islands has shrunk from about 184 individuals in 2012, when it was listed under the Endangered Species Act, to 139 members in 2022.
That’s an average population loss of 3.5% a year at a time when federal and state fisheries managers were supposed to be taking meaningful steps to better protect the mammals and boost their numbers.