Right Whale Consortium: Only 356 North Atlantic Right Whales Survive

An already-dire situation became dramatically more alarming Monday, as the federal agency responsible for protecting the North Atlantic right whale substantially reduced its past population estimates for this critically endangered species. Although the National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) originally estimated that there were 412 right whales alive as of January 2018, it has now reduced that number to 383 based on new scientific analysis of an unprecedented number of right whale deaths. Even more alarmingly, it announced an estimate of only 366 right whales alive as of January 2019. 

Right whale experts believe that the best estimate is now 356. Starting in June 2017, 31 mortalities and 11 mortal injuries have been recorded in U.S. and Canadian waters. But because many right whale carcasses are never detected, the same experts tell us the true number of fatalities has been much higher than the recorded number. Even worse, only around 70 breeding females survive. With low birth rates and high death rates, it might be only 10 to 20 years before no female right whales remain.

“We’ve known since 2017 that the right whale is doing much worse than we’d previously assumed,” said Jane Davenport, senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife. “To compound the species’ desperate situation, over the last four years, human activities have killed far more whales than we’d known. The clock is running out rapidly if we are to prevent the right whale’s extinction.”

In the face of this ongoing crisis, NOAA Fisheries has not implemented a single new measure to protect the right whale in U.S. waters from vessel strikes and fishing gear entanglements since 2017. And it will not even announce new regulations to reduce entanglements until May 2021, with full implementation rolling out over time. 

“We knew that the city was on fire, but we had no idea how much had already burned. Meanwhile, the government agency charged with protecting these whales has opted for a fiddle instead of a firehose,” Davenport says.

For the right whale to survive and recover, NOAA Fisheries has determined that human activities can kill less than one right whale each year, but that since 2011 human activities have killed around 24 whales per year. 

The only known causes of juvenile and adult right whale mortality are vessel strikes or entanglements in commercial fishing lines. Around 83% of right whales have been entangled by fishing gear at least once, and many more than once. Entanglements cause right whales to die lingering, painful deaths through wounding, starvation and infection. 

Even non-fatal entanglements make it difficult for female whales to build up the blubber they need to birth and nurse their babies, stretching the interval between calves from 3-4 years to 7-10 years. In the four calving seasons since 2017, only 22 births have been recorded, one-third of the birth rate the population needs to sustain itself.

Vessel strikes also kill right whales immediately or cause gruesome, painful wounds. Tragically, vessel strikes have already killed or mortally wounded two of the ten baby right whales born in 2019-20. Within just days of being born, the calf of Derecha, her fourth baby, suffered severe injuries when a propeller struck it across its mouth, impairing its ability to nurse and feed. Neither Derecha nor her calf has been seen since January 16. The seven-month-old right whale baby killed off New Jersey in June 2020 suffered two separate vessel collisions, one seriously injuring him before the other killed him outright. He was the first reported calf of the 2019-20 calving season and the first born to his mother.

In July, the International Union for Conservation of Nature uplisted the North Atlantic right whale from “endangered” to “critically endangered” on its Red List of Threatened Species, the only large whale to be so listed. The next step on the list is “extinct.”