Right Wales - Witness to Recovery

Commentary: Witness to Recovery
The New England Aquarium has been counting its successes—from a witnessed whale birth to stricter shipping rules

By Brita Belli


Right whales are identified by the callosities—or rough patches of white skin—on their heads.
© New England Aquarium

It takes a long time to get to know a whale. Moira Brown, a senior scientist with the New England Aquarium’s right whale research team, has been spending more than two months a year studying right whales in the Bay of Fundy off the coast of Maine for the past 24 years. The boat the researchers take out each day from early August to September in the Bay is the same one they’ve used for the past 29 years. During those months, the Aquarium research team sets up shop at a field station in Lubec, Maine—members rise at 4:30 a.m. to follow the right whales, who travel there each year to mate and to eat.

“There’s a lot of current [in the Bay],” says Brown. “The tidal gyre serves to concentrate the plankton...and the right whales are grazers who would rather go to one big grocery store. It’s more efficient.” And whale mothers are often there with young calves in tow, where the sheltered Bay offers them protection.

Where Whales are Born

With the start of December, the researchers have taken to the sky, to track the whale population as it migrates to Florida, where whales give birth in high-traffic shipping areas. Researchers sit in a small, two-seater plane and keep constant watch over the waters, tracking movements via a GPS and then circling in for pictures and closer observation. They are on the lookout for ship strikes in particular—major shipping channels converge with whale birthing areas off the Southeast U.S. coast—bringing everything from naval ships to nuclear submarines to casino boats in conflict with the endangered animals. There are less than 400 North Atlantic right whales alive today, and a new calf is a celebratory event. Just one calf was born in 2001, according to Brown, and 31 in 2002. Since 2002, she says, they’ve averaged over 20 calves a year. They don’t know why whale births are increasing, but she says the numbers are encouraging. “We now feel like we’re monitoring the recovery, and not the demise,” Brown says.

Most recently, New England Aquarium researchers were witness to an extraordinary event—a live whale birth, the first right whale birth ever witnessed, spotted as they were flying 1,000 feet overhead. Monica Zani, one of the researchers and witnesses, says in an online interview how she thought for some time, with the evident thrashing and blood, that the mother whale was hurt. “Then,” she says, “We saw the calf on her back.” (more)