Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Introduction / James A. Estes -- Background -- 2. Whales, interaction webs, and zero sum ecology / Robert T. Paine -- 3. Lessons from land : present and past signs of ecological decay and the overture to earth's 6th mass extinction / C. Josh Donlan, Paul S. Martin and Gary W. Roemer -- 4. When ecological pyramids were upside down / Jeremy B.C. Jackson -- 5. Pelagic ecosystem response to a century of commercial fishing and whaling / Timothy E. Essington -- 6. Evidence for bottom-up control of upper trophic level marine populations : is it scale-dependent? / George L. Hunt Jr. -- Whales and whaling -- 7. Evolutionary patterns in Cetacea : fishing up prey size through deep time / David R. Lindberg and Nicholas D. Pyenson -- 8. A taxonomy of world whaling : operations and eras / Randall R. Reeves and Tim D. Smith -- 9. The history of whales read from DNA / Stephen R. Palumbi and Joe Roman -- 10. Changes in marine mammal biomass in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands region before and after the period of commercial whaling / Bete Pfister and Douglas P. DeMaster -- 11. Industrial whaling in the North Pacific Ocean 1952-1978 : spatial patterns of harvest and decline / Eric M. Danner, Matthew J. Kauffman and Robert L. Brownell Jr. --

12. Worldwide distribution and abundance of killer whales / Karin A. Forney and Paul R. Wade -- 13. The natural history and ecology of killer whales / Lance G. Barrett-Lennard and Kathy A. Heise -- 14. Killer whales as predators of large baleen whales and sperm whales / Randall R. Reeves, Joel Berger and Phillip J. Clapham -- Process and theory -- 15. Physiological and ecological consequences of extreme body size in whales / Terrie M. Williams -- 16. Ecosystem impact of the decline of large whales in the North Pacific / Donald A. Croll, Raphael Kudela and Bernie R. Tershy -- 17. The removal of large whales from the Southern Ocean : evidence for long-term ecosystem effects? / Lisa T. Ballance, Robert L. Pitman, Roger P. Hewitt, Donal B. Siniff, Wayne Z. Trivelpiece, Phillip J. Clapham, and Robert L. Brownell, Jr. -- 18. Great whales as prey : using demography and bioenergetics to infer interactions in marine mammal communities / Daniel F. Doak, Terrie M. Williams and James A. Estes -- 19. Whales and whaling in the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea : oceanographic insights and ecosystem impacts / Alan M. Springer, Gus B. van Vliet, John F. Piatt, and Eric M. Danner -- 20. Legacy of industrial whaling : could killer whales be responsible for declines of sea lions, elephant seals and minke whales in the Southern Hemisphere? / Trevor A. Branch and Terrie M. Williams -- 21. Predator diet breadth and prey population dynamics : mechanism and modeling / Marc Mangel and Nicholas Wolf -- 22. Bigger is better : the role of whales as detritus in marine ecosystems / Craig R. Smith --

Case studies -- 23. Gray whales in the Bering and Chukchi seas / Raymond C. Highsmith, Kenneth O. Coyle, Bodil A. Bluhm, and Brenda konar -- 24. Whales, whaling and ecosystems in the North Atlantic Ocean / Phillip J. Clapham and Jason S. Link -- 25. Sperm whales in ocean ecosystems / Hal Whitehead -- 26. Ecosystem effects of fishing and whaling in the North Pacific and Atlantic Ocean / Boris Worm, Heike K. Lotze and Ransom A. Myers -- 27. Potential influences of whaling on the status and trends of pinniped populations / Daniel P. Costa, Michael J. Weise and John P.Y. Arnould -- Social context -- 28. The dynamic between social systems and ocean ecosystems : are there lessons from commercial whaling? / Daniel W. Bromley -- 29. Whaling, law and culture / Michael K. Orbach -- Overview and synthesis -- 30. Whales are big and it matters / Peter Kareiva, Christopher Yuan-Farrell and Casey O'Connor -- 31. Retrospection and review / J.A. Estes, D.P. DeMaster, R.L. Brownell, Jr., D.F. Doak, and T.M. Williams -- Index.