COURTESY OF NOAA FISHERIES
Endangered North Atlantic right whales
NOAA Fisheries researchers have been looking into how to preserve the shrinking population of critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whales.
Official have concluded that the surest way of protecting the species is by preserving the lives of adult females in the population as a way to promote population growth and recovery.
According to Royal Society Open Science, most right whale deaths are attributed to entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with ships.
“Had North Atlantic right whales increased at the annual rate that we show they are capable of, the population number would be almost double what it is now and their current situation would not be so dire,” said Peter Corkeron, who is lead author of the paper and heads the large whale research effort at NOAA Fisheries’ Northeast Fisheries Science Center.
The North Atlantic right whale is one of three species of right whales. Of the three, it lives in the most industrialized habitat and migrates close to shore.
From 1970 to 2009, 80 percent of all North Atlantic right whale deaths for which the cause is known were human-induced, mainly from entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with ships. By comparison, most deaths of southern right whales that have been observed were calves in their first year of life and very few were directly attributable to human activities.
“We studied four populations of right whales, three from the southern populations off eastern South America, southern Africa and southwest Australia plus the western North Atlantic population, that had comparable time-series data and minimum counts of calves known to be born each year,” said Corkeron. “Intensive aerial surveys of North Atlantic right whale calving habitat began in 1992, so that marked the start of our comparison.”
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