October 28, 2020 — The North Atlantic right whale population likely numbered just 366 animals with 94 breeding females in early 2019, a substantial downgrade from earlier estimates and a signal the extremely endangered species is in even more dire straits, NMFS officials warned Monday.
The warning came in an email to the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team, an advisory panel that confers with NMFS experts on how to reduce accidental injuries and deaths of whales, the biggest threats being ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear. Previous estimates, based on biologists’ modeling, experts’ surveys and cataloging of surviving right whales, had pegged the population that migrates between Canada and Florida at 412 animals in January 2018. That’s one source of the rounded-off “about 400” population number common in reports about the species in recent years.
The news came out one day before the annual meeting of the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium, a group dedicated to researching and reducing threats to the species. The U.S.- and Canada-based group, which includes academic, government, and shipping and fishing industries representation, opened its two-day virtual conference Tuesday with the latest population data.