March 23, 2018 — These are dire times for the North Atlantic right whale.
A record number of the whales — 17 — died due to ship strikes or gear entanglements last year. Meanwhile, scientists who have been tracking the mammals noted the birth of a mere five calves over the same period. The troubling trend does not bode well for the species.
“The story is just a simple one of arithmetic,” Charles “Stormy” Mayo, director of the right whale ecology program at the Center for Coast Studies, told Public Radio International. “If you have fewer births and higher mortalities, extinction is around the corner.”
It doesn’t have to be this way. Right whales, docile creatures that grow to about 50 feet long and about 70 tons, at one time seemed to be one of the conservation movement’s greatest success stories. The creatures — hunted nearly to extinction in the whaling era — saw their numbers grow from fewer than 250 to the current estimate of 450 after two decades of conservation efforts on the part of the federal government and the fishing and shipping industries.
The measures that worked before, however, are no longer sufficient to keep the species healthy. This is in large part due to the fractured nature of their habitat, which runs from the southeastern United States to Nova Scotia.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Times