11 new right whale calves born this season, New England Aquarium reports
There are only about 370 right whales left, and the remaining population is threatened by human activities, including fishing, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Since 2017, right whales have been in what NOAA considers an "unusual mortality event."
Researchers spotted the 11th mother-calf pair in Cape Cod Bay last week, at the tail end of calving season, which spans November to mid-April, the aquarium said.
"With past calf counts ranging from 39 to zero, we never know how any calving season will unfold," Philip Hamilton, senior scientist at the aquarium's Anderson Cabot Center, said in a written statement.
Despite low overall numbers, Hamilton noted that this season's count included births by four new mothers: "Accordion," "Check Mark," "Caterpillar," and an unnamed fourth whale, known by its catalogue number, 4540. Three of them were named for prominent scars caused by obvious vessel strikes, said Amy Warren, the aquarium's scientific program officer.
Over the past 25 years, there have been an average of 17 new whales born each calving season, Warren said.
"Honestly, we have a hard time really saying if it's a good year or a bad year because it's all very relative," she said. "Ideally, we would love to see 20-plus calves every year."
But she noted that there are only about 70 breeding females in the population, and right whales have a calf every four to 10 years.
"If you start crunching numbers on that, you're going to start running out of whales," Warren said.
The whales have been at the center of a conflict over fishing regulations in the Gulf of Maine because they can become entangled in the vertical lines lobstermen use to haul their traps. Officials directly linked the death of a whale to a Maine lobsterman's gear for the first time in October.
For several years, scientists have warned entanglements in fishing gear and boat strikes are the most common causes of premature right whale deaths, but they could not prove any of the problematic gear belonged to Maine fishermen until the fall.
Lobstermen have leaned on the absence of data when calling out how regulations meant to protect the whales come at a great cost to them and threaten to put them out of business.
Though there have been fewer recorded right whale deaths this season than in years past, it can be difficult to track each death since the whales live far from human researchers, Warren said. Only about a third of right whale deaths end up being documented, according to NOAA.
"We start seeing whales just disappear, for lack of a better word," Warren said.
Warren cautioned against getting caught up in specific counts and encouraged people to take a holistic view of the threats facing right whales when considering how best to protect the population.
"It doesn't matter if its 360 or 400 — that's such a low number," Warren said. "And we know that human causes are killing them."
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