Number of right whales rose slightly last year, group estimates

The North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium has released a new estimate that says the number of right whales increased slightly last year.

But Philip Hamilton, senior scientist at the New England Aquarium's Anderson Cabot Center and the identification database curator for the consortium, said the 2023 number is heartening, but 2024 has been a rough year for the endangered whales.

The population estimate is 372, including 12 calves added in 2023. This is up slightly from the 2022 estimate of 367.

"It's definitely better than it was in the late 2010s," said Hamilton. "We had zero calves born in 2018, so it's a remarkable increase from that."

In 2024, there were five documented deaths and four lost calves that scientists presume are dead — the highest annual mortality count since 2019.

Hamilton said protecting right whales is a challenge. While a lot of effort was invested in protecting them from vessel strikes and entanglements in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, he said, "we know that eight of the 11 entanglements this year were documented in Gulf St. Lawrence, and at least four of them happened there."

The high number of deaths will impact the 2024 population estimate when it's generated next year, the consortium said. 

A news release says that from December 2023 to March 2024, 20 calves were born — the highest number in a decade — even though five calves did not survive past the spring. 

Four of the mothers gave birth for the first time.

Mothers normally give birth to their first calf at age 10, but more than 40 females between the ages of 10 and 20 have not given birth to their first calf, Hamilton said.

The reasoning behind that is complicated, he said, pointing to nutrition and body size — which can be affected by past entanglements in some cases — as contributing factors.

Kim Elmslie, the campaign director at Oceana Canada, said that while the number of right whales has increased slightly, "it's not a time to take our foot off the gas.

"We still need to keep the measures in place. We still need to be vigilant," she said.

"This is a species that in 2010 was almost 500 individuals.… So there's still work to be done, but there is a lot of goodwill from the fishing industry, from the shipping industry, especially here in Canada. 

Transitioning to ropeless fishing gear more quickly and making vessel slowdowns mandatory would help, Elmslie said.

Oceana has found that when slowdowns in Canada and the United States are voluntary, a lot of vessels don't comply, she said.

"There's still way too many deaths to have, you know, the recovery that's needed for this species," she said.

"It's moving in the right direction, but we need to continue to do more to prevent unnecessary deaths."