There’s some good news for the endangered North Atlantic right whale.
The recently ended calving season, which runs between mid-November and mid-April, saw 23 new calves born.
This is the fourth highest number of new calves born on record and the highest it’s been since 2009.
Amy Warren, scientific program officer with the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, said her colleagues were surprised to see so many new calves born this season.
“The season actually started up pretty quickly … every single survey that was happening in the calving grounds … had one, two, three new calves each day” said Warren.
“We all kind of wondered like, ‘Oh my gosh, like, it’s still going. It’s still going. It’s still going.’”
Three of the cows are first-time mothers and two of them are just 10 years old, the earliest cows are expected to give birth.
The whales give birth off the coast of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas before moving north.
So far 18 of the 23 calves have been re-spotted off the coast of Massachusetts.
This doesn’t mean the other five have met a sad end. “It’s just that they haven’t been seen,” said Warren.
It’s a bit of welcome good news for a species that has been in short supply of it.
In recent years, headlines about the North Atlantic right whales have often focused on their deaths, either from entanglements or vessel strikes.
Officially, the whales are still going through what is called an “unusual mortality event,” which has been ongoing since 2017.
The species now have an estimated population of 380, better than the 359 the species had in 2020, but far below the 25-plus-year high of 483 in 2011.
Warren said an increase in protected areas and closing off some areas to shipping have helped, but the animals are still critically endangered and the work to save them needs to continue.
“I think it’s easy for some to say, ‘Oh, look, we’re good, we can scale back. But that’s the exact opposite to me,” said Warren
“What we’re doing is helping. So let’s keep pushing where we can push, keep improving things where we can improve things.”
