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Rare Right Whale Sightings Reported Along New England Shoreline

May 24, 2022 — Several people have reported rare sightings of North Atlantic Right Whales this month along the New England coastline from Provincetown to Portsmouth.

“It is pretty rare to see them that close to shore,” Heather Pettis of the New England Aquarium said.

With its bristle-like baleen plates and distinctive callosities decorating its head to its massive size and characteristic tail flukes, the North Atlantic Right Whale has been entertaining New Englanders this spring with some shoreline shows.

“Sure enough, there was a right whale skim feeding right off of Route 1A,” Pettis said. “This time of year whales sort of leave Cape Cod Bay, where they’ve been feeding over the winter. They disperse and we have these opportunistic sightings pop up.”

Read the full story at NBC Connecticut

Canada announces changes to protect right whales

January 24, 2018 — NEW BRUNSWICK, Canada — Canadian officials announced new restrictions Tuesday on the amount of rope that snow crab fishermen can use in an ongoing effort to reduce the effect of fishing on the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale.

“We don’t want meters and meters of rope floating on the surface of the water,” Fisheries and Oceans Canada Minister Dominic LeBlanc said.

With 450 or fewer right whales remaining, after the death last year of 16 in Canadian and U.S. waters, and a possible 17th death still under review, pressure is increasing on two ways that humans cause right whale deaths: fishing gear entanglement and ship strikes. Last week, U.S. conservation groups sued the National Marine Fisheries Service to tighten restrictions on lobster fishing to protect the whales.

A roundtable on right whales, convened by LeBlanc last November, with fishing and marine business people, environmental groups, indigenous community members, scientists and Canadian and U.S. government officials, led to a more thorough understanding of the situation, according to a statement from the Fisheries Service and Oceans Canada.

LeBlanc’s announcement Tuesday was about four initial changes in snow crab fishing policy and practices to better protect right whales, 12 of which were documented as being found dead in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. More initiatives to limit entanglement and ship strikes are likely to come, he said.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” said biologist Regina Asmutis-Silvia, executive director of Whale and Dolphin Conservation, of LeBlanc’s announcement. “To me it all hinges on what comes next. This in and of itself isn’t enough.”

New England Aquarium research scientist Heather Pettis agreed, saying the first steps looked promising and appeared to show that LeBlanc understood the urgency of the problem.

“We’re digesting it all and looking at how each of these four measures are going to help protect this population,” said Pettis, who is the administrator for the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium, a research collaborative.

The primary limit LeBlanc set on snow crab fishing is to allow no more than 12 feet, or 3.7 meters, of floating rope between a snow crab trap’s primary buoy and its secondary buoy, which is expected to “massively” reduce line in Canadian snow crab fishing areas, LeBlanc said.

Of six right whale necropsies completed by Oct. 5 in Canada, two deaths were attributed to entanglement and four to ship strikes.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

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