Mo Ganji: Southern Right Whale | Südlicher Glattwal | Eubalaena australis | No. 208/250 from work group 8/99

Southern Right Whale | Südlicher Glattwal | Eubalaena australis

Mo Ganji brings the southern right whale — a large baleen whale inhabiting temperate and subpolar waters of the Southern Hemisphere — into a field of reduction by letting the single line move toward essence rather than immensity or history. The line condenses the being into a reduced coherence, setting aside scale, migration and mass so that presence can surface without assertion. In Ganji’s understanding, the line is not bound to the whale alone; it remains open, reminding us that every figure is also a human concept briefly anchored to something far older and less contained.

Eubalaena australis is listed as Least Concern (LC) on the IUCN Red List. Once heavily depleted by commercial whaling, the species has shown significant recovery since the cessation of large-scale hunting. Populations have increased steadily in several regions, including waters off South America, southern Africa and Australia, though recovery is uneven and slow due to the species’ low reproductive rate.

The principal threats include vessel strikes, entanglement in fishing gear, coastal disturbance near calving grounds, and the long-term effects of climate change on prey distribution. Because southern right whales rely on specific shallow coastal areas for breeding and nursing, human activity in these zones continues to pose localized risks despite overall population growth.

Ganji’s single line opens a space in which the whale can be encountered beyond recovery narrative or former exploitation. It allows attention to rest on a life shaped by duration and return, suggesting how endurance in the natural world is not a restoration of the past, but a careful continuation shaped by limits that must remain intact if presence is to persist.