The North Atlantic right whale is already one of the most endangered animals on the planet. Right whales had an unfortunate combination of features that made them highly attractive to 17th and 18th century whalers. Growing to more than 50 feet long and weighing over 70 tons, they seem almost tailor-made for the needs of whalers. They are slow swimmers, so they’re easily caught. They are docile filter feeders, easy to follow, and unlikely to damage ships when harpooned. They also contain a large amount of blubber, so they not only float after death, they can be rendered down to produce many barrels of whale oil.
The reason the whales weren’t heavily hunted in the 19th century is … there weren’t any. By 1750, the species was already on the ropes.
Today there are only an estimated 458 animals remaining, and they’re dying off faster than they are reproducing. Only five were born in 2017, while 17 animals are known to have died. But 2017 seems like a happy memory compared to this season.
The situation appears to be getting worse: Researchers tracking the whales' usual calving grounds off Georgia and northern Florida have not seen a single calf yet this breeding season, which started in December and peaks in January and February.
Spotters along the East Coast have seen no sign of a single newborn right whale.
… if there really are no newborns this year, that would be “unprecedented,” said Charles “Stormy” Mayo, director of the Right Whale Ecology Program at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Mass.
“I think we’re in a helluva pickle,” he said.
Whaling may be gone, but that doesn’t mean the threats to whales have disappeared. In fact, they’re getting worse.
Entanglements from lobster trap lines and other commercial fishing gear have been responsible for 85 percent of all North Atlantic right whale deaths since 2010. Climate change also makes matters worse. Experts say that if the current trend continues, the North Atlantic right whale could go extinct by 2040.
These whales can live as long as 70 years, but the frequency of death from encountering fishing lines or ships has reduced the average life expectancy of whales living today to only 15 years—which goes a long way toward explaining why no new calves are being born.
There is also a Pacific right whale (about 100 of them left), and a Southern whale that’s faring better, with about 8,000 individuals remaining. Research based on genetic diversity suggests that previous to human activity, there were around 500,000 right whales in the Atlantic.
The image at the top of the article is actually a Southern right whale. This is a North Atlantic right whale
That green line around its back is a fishing line that cut deeply into the whale’s body. Despite repeated efforts to cut the line and rescue the whale, it died and washed onto the beach near Daytona, Florida.