February 5, 2026 — An aerial survey of Cape Cod Bay conducted by the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) on Jan. 10 found 33 North Atlantic right whales here — the highest number on a single day in January in the center’s 27 years of such surveys. Normally the whales are just starting to trickle into the area at this time of year, said Daniel Palacios, director of the center’s right whale ecology program.
“It was a surprise,” said Palacios. “There are good plankton resources in the bay right now, and that’s drawing them here earlier than usual.”
Over more than 40 years of research, the CCS has established that Cape Cod Bay is the greatest known aggregation point for the roughly 380 members of the endangered species. In the winter, more than half of the remaining population comes here to feed on dense patches of plankton, said Charles “Stormy” Mayo, who founded the center’s right whale ecology program after conducting the first successful whale disentanglement in 1984.
In the warmer waters between Florida and the Carolinas, calving season, which runs from mid-November through mid-April, has been good. Twenty-two calves have been born so far, compared to 11 in last winter’s season and 20 the year before.
The most recent calf to be identified was just off the coast of Flagler Beach, Fla. on Jan. 30, according to the New England Aquarium.
The sighting of so many calves is “a very positive sign,” Mayo said. “We should be encouraged. But this population, at less than 400 animals, is still in tough shape.”
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the right whale is in the midst of an “unusual mortality event” that began in 2017, when 17 whales are known to have died in one year.
There are only about 70 breeding females in the entire population, and the number of calves born per season can range dramatically, with the highest recorded number being 39 in 2009 and the lowest zero in 2018.
The average number of calves born from 1980 to 2022 was 16, so 22 calves is considered a good season. Nonetheless, population biologists at NOAA Fisheries have said that 50 or more calves need to be born every year for many years to reverse the species’ decline and set the stage for recovery.
The original cause of the right whales’ decline was whaling — the entire population was reduced to 100 or fewer animals off the coast of the U.S. and Canada in the early 1900s. An international ban on hunting all right whales went into effect in 1935, but the population has struggled to recover due to mortality and serious injury from vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear.