In late October 2020, NMFS reported a preliminary population abundance estimate of 366 North Atlantic right whales alive in January 2019. Female numbers are declining more rapidly than males, and the corresponding loss of reproductive potential leads to an alarming concern about an increasing risk of extinction. Today, there are likely less than 350 North Atlantic right whales in existence, with fewer than 95 reproductive-age females in the population. Human-caused mortality and serious injury, particularly entanglements and vessel strikes, is the greatest threat to recovery of the species. In 2010, the population entered a period of decline that appears to be continuing due to high levels of human-caused mortality and declining calf production. In the first decade of the 2000s, it grew steadily but at a rate well below those of many other populations of large whales. (New England Aquarium)ĭuring the 1990s, the right whale population fluctuated between periods of slow decline and periods of slow growth. waters, while southern right whale populations have seen steady increases since the end of commercial whaling in the southern hemisphere.
Today, there are likely fewer than 500 right whales in the entire North Pacific, and approximately 30 individuals in the eastern North Pacific stock inhabiting U.S. The North Atlantic right whale is one of three right whale species, along with the North Pacific right whale and the southern right whale. North Atlantic right whales now occur almost exclusively along the east coasts of the United States and Canada, where they rely on a calanoid copepod, Calanus finmarchicus as their primary food source. In recent decades, this slow recovery has been impeded by mortality and serious injury from ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear. After 1935, when an international agreement went into effect banning the hunting of all right whales, their numbers began to increase slowly. The population off Europe had been virtually extirpated while a small population of perhaps a hundred or fewer survived in the western North Atlantic off the United States and Canada. Later, commercial whaling brought them to the brink of extinction by the early 1900s. North Atlantic right whales were first hunted as early as the 9th century by Norse whalers. The North Atlantic right whale is one the world’s most endangered species of large whale. Provisions for Managing Fisheries Interactions.Marine Mammal Commission: An Independent Agency of the U.S.
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