The “Right” Whale

I saw two “lifers” in the last month, the Townsend’s warbler in Walpole, and a North Atlantic right whale that I spotted while birding with Eastmans out of Hampton Harbor (www.eastmansdocks.com).  I had seen neither the warbler nor the whale before for good reason.  I have yet to get to the west coast where the warbler is common, and the whale is one of only 350 needles in the haystack that is the Atlantic Ocean.

That the right whale is rare is due to the fact that it has been for much of the history of whaling, the “right whale” to hunt.  Right whales were taken as early as the 11^th century in the Bay of Biscay by the Basques, and in New England from the late 1600’s.  This is a much longer period of exploitation than has been experienced by other species, for example the more common fin whale.  Capable of speeds up to 25 knots, the fin, or finback whale could outrun any whaling vessel until the invention of steam power provided whaling vessels with sufficient speed to keep pace.

In comparison, North Atlantic right whales are slow.  To add to their evolutionary misfortune, they possess a thick layer of blubber that makes them an especially lucrative catch.  Unfortunately, the blubber also causes right whale carcasses to float.  Their name is a stark reminder of a troubled past, but amazingly, it could have been worse had the explosive harpoon not been invented in 1870.  This contraption enabled air to be injected into a whale’s carcass to keep it afloat, and together with steam power, it helped spread the burden across a larger number of whale species.

Remnant populations of right whales remain in the North Atlantic, the North Pacific, and the oceans of the Southern Hemisphere.  Although some authorities consider the three populations to be a single species, recent genetic data indicate that they are evolving separately, and have not interbred for millennia.  The population in the North Pacific is even more critically endangered than that in the North Atlantic.  Estimates put the number in Alaska at between 30 and 50, with another 100-200 in the western North Pacific. The population in the southern seas is the healthiest, with perhaps as many as 10,000 animals left.  This is the only population of the three that is not decreasing.  The future of right whales is complicated by their low birthrate.  A female right whale gives birth to one calf every three to five years.

I consider myself very fortunate to live in a part of the world where we can see so many of the world’s whales.  Jeffries Ledge lies a few miles to the north of Stellwagen Bank, which is a National Marine Sanctuary and one of the ten best whalewatching sites in the world, as ranked by the World Wildlife Fund.  Here, the whales are further protected by several regulatory and non-regulatory measures.  These include an exclusion area of 500 yards around North Atlantic right whales within which vessels may not enter, rerouted shipping lanes, speed restrictions, and emergency response protocols for stranded and injured whales.  I took the accompanying photo on November 3^rd.

North Atlantic Right Whale