Saving Seafood

Rare North Atlantic right whale grows population to 384

October 21, 2025 — One of the rarest whales on the planet has continued an encouraging trend of population growth in the wake of new efforts to protect the giant animals, according to scientists who study them.

The North Atlantic right whale now numbers an estimated 384 animals, up eight whales from the previous year, according to a report by the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium released Tuesday. The whales have shown a trend of slow population growth over the past four years and have gained more than 7% of their 2020 population, the consortium said.

It’s a welcome development in the wake of a troubling decline in the previous decade. The population of the whales, which are vulnerable to collisions with ships and entanglement in fishing gear, fell about 25% from 2010 to 2020.

The whale’s trend toward recovery is a testament to the importance of conservation measures, said Philip Hamilton, a senior scientist with the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life. The center and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration collaborate to calculate the population estimate.

New management measures in Canada that attempt to keep the whales safe amid their increased presence in the Gulf of St. Lawrence have been especially important, Hamilton said.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

New England scientists honing models that predict where right whales will pop up next

September 22, 2025 — In recent years, efforts to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale population have included making ships slow down in known whale zones to avoid hitting them and encouraging fishing crews to use ropeless gear to prevent them from becoming entangled.

But changes to where the whales congregate have been challenging some of those efforts.

Now scientists at the University of Maine and the New England Aquarium in Boston are working together to improve their modelling to predict where the whales will be at any given time.

“North Atlantic right whales utilize a lot of the ocean environment, and so it’s really hard for humans to be out there observing them at all times,” Camille Ross, an associate research scientist at the New England Aquarium in Boston, said in a radio interview with CBC New Brunswick’s Shift.

“And so models like this are really important to fill in those data gaps when we don’t have eyes on the water.”

Ross is the lead author of the study, called “Incorporating prey fields into North Atlantic right whale density surface models,” which was published in the latest edition of the research journal Endangered Species Research.

Read the full article at CBC News

Endangered fin whale and calf sighting is a “rare occurrence,” New England Aquarium scientist says

August 7, 2025 — New England Aquarium researchers recently documented what they say was a rare sighting of an endangered fin whale and its calf.

Scientists on a July 24 aerial survey flew over the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, about 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod. They observed more than 1,000 marine animals, including seven fin whales, one endangered sperm whale, one humpback whale, two minke whales and more than 900 dolphins.

“Seeing an endangered fin whale and its calf is a rare occurrence,” assistant research scientist Kate Laemmle said in a statement Wednesday.

Read the full article at CBS News

Endangered whales gave birth to few babies this year as population declines

May 19, 2025 — A vanishing species of whale gave birth to few babies this birthing season, raising alarms among scientists and conservationists who fear the animal could go extinct.

The whale is the North Atlantic right whale, which numbers only about 370 and has declined in population in recent years. The whales give birth to calves off the southeastern United States from mid-November to mid-April, and federal authorities have said they need to have at least 50 calves per season to start recovering.

The whales didn’t come anywhere near that number this year. The calving season produced only 11 mother-calf pairs, scientists with the New England Aquarium in Boston said.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Fewer Right Whales Born This Year, Scientists Say

April 28, 2025 — At least 11 right whales were born this calving season, the New England Aquarium reported this week.

The number is lower than what scientists hoped, as the critically endangered species faces threats from human-caused activities. Entanglements in fishing gear and boat strikes are the leading causes of death and injury to the population.

Scientists say those injuries make it more difficult for right whales to reproduce and survive.

The 2024 calving season was more encouraging because roughly 20 individuals were born. However, the New England Aquarium noted that by last fall, a handful of newly born right whales had already disappeared.

Read the full story at Rhode Island PBS

 

Right whales stay in Cape Cod Bay longer, and later

June 16, 2022 — It isn’t high gas prices that changed the travel plans of right whales.

A new study in Global Change Biology by nine authors discovered that over the last couple of decades North Atlantic right whales are most active in Cape Cod Bay 18 days later than before.

That’s a shift — with a longer stay in the month of May — that could potentially bring the whales further into conflict with the region’s annual boating  and lobster season and require an extended season of protections.

“The state has a flexible rule in place — where they can extend fishing closures and small boat speed restrictions — that now is in place up the coast to New Hampshire,” the study’s lead author, Dan Pendleton of the New England Aquarium, said. “Massachusetts Bay has seen more right whales than it used to.”

“One of the problems with migratory animals is they can get into big trouble moving into shipping lanes so if we can move and adapt the protections as (whales) adapt to climate change, that would be ideal,” Pendleton said. “So much seems out of our control but one thing we can do is push for regulations that are responsive to the needs of an endangered species.”

Beth Casoni, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, hadn’t yet seen the study, which was published June 7. Casoni said, therefore, she couldn’t comment until she has been able to read it.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Right whales’ survival rates plummet after severe injury from fishing gear

June 14, 2022 — Most North Atlantic right whales that are severely injured in fishing gear entanglements die within three years, a new study led by scientists at the New England Aquarium and Duke University finds.

North Atlantic right whales are a critically whose population has shrunk in recent decades. Scientists estimate fewer than 350 of the iconic whales are still alive in the wild today.

To examine the role entanglements have played in the species’ decline, the researchers tracked the outcomes of 1,196 entanglements involving 573 right whales between 1980 and 2011 and categorized each run-in based on the severity of the injury incurred

The data revealed that male and female right whales with were eight times more likely to die than males with minor injuries, and only 44% of males and 33% of females with severe injuries survived longer than 36 months.

Read the full story at Phys.org

New research shows climate change impacts on whale habitat use in the warming Gulf of Maine

June 10, 2022 — New research finds climate change is having an impact on how large whale species, including the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, use habitats in the warming Gulf of Maine, showing that right whales’ use of Cape Cod Bay has shifted significantly over the last 20 years.

The study, led by the New England Aquarium and including researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the USGS Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center, the Center for Coastal Studies, UCLA, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the Canadian Whale Institute was published this month in the journal Global Change Biology. The authors set out to better understand the impacts of ocean climate change on phenology, or the timing of recurring biological events such as when plants flower each year. Using more than 20 years of data, the scientists measured shifts in whale habitat use in Cape Cod Bay, evaluating trends in peak use for North Atlantic right whales, humpback whales, and fin whales. The study found that peak use of Cape Cod Bay had shifted almost three weeks later for right whales and humpback whales. Changes in the timing of whale habitat use were related to when spring starts, which has been changing as a result of climate change. The study suggested that highly migratory marine mammals can and do adapt the timing of their habitat use in response to climate-driven changes in their environment, with results showing increased habitat use by right whales in Cape Cod Bay from February to May, with greatest increases in April and May.

“The time of year when we are most likely to see right and humpback whales in Cape Cod Bay has changed considerably, and right whales are using the habitat much more heavily than they did 20 years ago,” said lead author Dr. Dan Pendleton, Research Scientist in the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life.

Read the full story at ScienceDaily

New project aims to protect whales while developing offshore wind energy

June 3, 2022 — A new partnership between conservation and renewable energy is coming to Massachusetts.

The Right Wind project, through the combined efforts of the New England Aquarium, Cornell University, and LAUTEC US, aims to help offshore wind developers protect the North Atlantic right whale.

“We’re excited to be starting this project because it gives us an opportunity to develop tools that can help reduce the potential risks of wind energy development to North Atlantic right whales, a critically endangered species that numbers less than 350 individuals,” said Dr. Laura Ganley, an associate research scientist at the New England Aquarium.

Read the full story at Boston.com

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