February 27, 2018 — The North Atlantic right whales may soon become extinct as no new births have been recorded, experts have warned.
According to a report in the Guardian, the scientists who observed a whale community off the U.S. coast have not recorded any new births in the right whale population. The report also stated that a huge number of right whale deaths were recorded in 2017.
Scientists have, therefore, said that a blend of the rising mortality rate and the declining fertility rate is resulting in the extinction of the right whales. They predicted that at this rate, the whales would become extinct by 2040.
“At the rate, we are killing them off, this 100 females will be gone in 20 years,” Mark Baumgartner, a marine ecologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts said adding that the North Atlantic right whales will be functionally extinct by 2040 if no action is undertaken to protect them.
Speaking of North Atlantic whales, Baumgartner said the population of these whales was quite healthy about seven years ago. However, it soon began to decline after lobster fishermen began fishing in the waters.
Read the full story at the International Business Times