Since the instrument was signed, the production and use of ozone-depleting chemicals has fallen globally by 98 per cent. The Franklin River Bob Brown rafting the Franklin River for the first time in 1976 in The Giants. Save the whales (and other species) Humpback whales have staged a miraculous recovery since the 1970s. Credit: Danielle SmithAnyone growing up in the 1980s would recall the proliferation of bumper stickers and t-shirts calling on governments to protect whales – particularly humpback whales, which had fallen to critically low levels. Humpback whales, which had been hunted down to a few hundred surviving animals, now number in their tens of thousands.