Bernard Roffey really, really wanted to see the huge, aquatic mammals that swim in our back yard.

Once hunted to the brink of extinction, humpback whales have made a dramatic comeback in the North Pacific Ocean over the past four decades, a new study says.

He’s accused of whale-teeth deals on the black market.

From the earliest days of exploration, mariners in Chile’s cool southern waters marveled at the abundance of whales. A Jesuit naturalist wrote of the sea “boiling” with their spouting.

Among 19th century Nantucket boatmen, the island of Mocha was notorious as the stamping grounds of “Mocha Dick,” an ill-tempered sperm whale bedecked with harpoons.

An attempt to protect the endangered right whale from being killed by commercial ships has languished for more than a year in part because Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and White House economists questioned the conclusions of marine scientists, according to internal documents.

The polar bear has become an icon of global warming vulnerability, but a new study found an Arctic mammal that may be even more at risk to climate change: the narwhal.

Violent clashes with animal rights groups and fewer whale sightings forced Japan’s whaling fleet to head home from the Antarctic with only 55 percent of its 985-whale hunting target, the government said Monday.

Rescue workers saved one of two whales stranded on a New Zealand beach but were forced to shoot the other after efforts to guide it back to sea failed, a conservation official said Friday.

Animal Planet’s desire to become less warm and fuzzy means exposure to some unaccustomed issues - such as danger on the high seas and journalistic fairness. A network crew returned to port in Australia last week after tagging along on a mission to interfere with a Japanese whaling expedition in the Antarctic. A miniseries about the experience, “Whale Wars,” is expected to air this fall.

Animal Planet’s desire to become less warm and fuzzy means exposure to some unaccustomed issues, like danger on the high seas and journalistic fairness. A network crew returned to port in Australia last week after tagging along on a mission to interfere with a Japanese whaling expedition in the Antarctic. A miniseries about the experience, “Whale Wars,” is expected to air this fall.