This photo is of a humpback whale. When we think of Humpback whales, we picture these majestic, powerful, gigantic animals throwing the entirety of their bodies out of the water with some kind of eagerness or enthusiasm. And despite these whales being a common occurrence for most living around the Pacific Northwest, due to commercial whaling we had decimated the numbers of these humpbacks to a couple thousand. Around my hometown in the Salish Sea, for the entirety of the 1900s, humpbacks were seldom, if ever, actually seen. This year, we have now had over 800 humpback individuals using the Salish Sea both on their migration path and as part of their feeding grounds. The return of the humpbacks really proves the point that any species can rebound as long as we give nature the time and space to heal. And losing these charismatic and intelligent animals that live lives just as complex as our own would be an absolute shame.