More than halfway through their calving season, nine right whales have given birth in the waters off Georgia and Florida.
That’s fewer than researchers would like to see for the continued recovery of this highly endangered large whale. About 450 north Atlantic right whales are believed to exist.
“It’s been a slow season for sure,” said Clay George, lead marine mammal biologist for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
An average season, which runs from December through March, sees about 20 calves. There’s still hope that the 2013-14 numbers will improve. Bad weather has hampered early aerial survey efforts, but better weather last week increased the count by only two calves.
Teams have sighted at least 10 females that are old enough to give birth but have not been seen with a calf this season.
“That number of potential mothers adds to our hopes that we will be sighting more calves this season,” said Patricia Naessig, right whale coordinator for the nonprofit Sea To Shore Alliance.
Whalers decimated these bus-sized marine mammals in the 1800s when they were the “right” whale to hunt: They are big, slow and float when killed. Current threats include ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear. In December, federal speed restrictions on large vessels were made permanent to better protect right whales. However, despite an exclusion that allows ship to speed up if human safety is a concern, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is now considering a safety-related petition to exclude federally-maintained dredged entrance channels and pilot boarding areas for ports from New York to Jacksonville from vessel speed restrictions.
Considered an urban whale because they swim near the highly populated U.S. East Coast, right whales feed in the waters off New England in the summer, eating tiny crustaceans they filter through their baleen plates.
In winter, pregnant females and some juveniles head south to their only known calving area, off the Georgia and Florida coasts. They don’t feed while they’re in these waters.
Some well-documented whales are among those seen this season. Half Note, age 31, gave birth to her sixth calf.
“Unfortunately, though, she has lost her last three calves,” Naessig said. “We don’t know why those calves died, but we’re hoping this one will survive.”
Naevus was the first to give birth this season, showing up with a newborn right before Christmas. It was her fifth calf. Couplet also had her fifth. Boomerang and a whale known only as number 2746 in the official catalog of right whales maintained by the New England Aquarium each had their third calves.
Biologists from the Georgia DNR — along with those from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — regularly dart the animals to get a plug of skin and blubber for genetic testing, which allows them to track individuals, build family trees and get a better fix on population numbers.
This year they’ve sampled four calves, waiting until each is at least a month old. In all they’ve sampled about two-thirds of the calves documented since 2006.
In January, the Sea to Shore team sighted an injured yearling about 12 miles east of Ossabaw Island. It was identified as last season’s calf of Equator, a whale that was freed from fishing gear in the southeast in 2008 and was sighted last season with her first calf since her disentanglement.
This injured yearling is that calf.
“The yearling was documented on Jan. 15 having some serious injuries on its right pectoral flipper and leading edges of its flukes,” Naessig said. “The injuries appear to have been caused by an entanglement in fishing gear. The whale didn’t appear to be actively entangled when it was sighted on Jan. 15, but did seem to be thin and having some health concerns.”
The whale was sighted off Ponce Inlet, Fla. on Jan. 19 and again off Sebastian Inlet on Jan. 22.
“So, the whale was heading south pretty quickly during its last sightings,” Naessig said. “We’re hoping to see it again on its way back north.”