The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOOA) ensures that the status of the North Atlantic right whales is critical . It is estimated that 17 specimens out of a total of 450 have died in 2017 . According to statements by US federal officials, these animals need urgent intervention or else their disappearance will be irreversible .
The North Atlantic right whales owe their name, originally from the English Right Whale , for being a ” correct ” or appropriate species and easy to hunt . Their friendly nature causes them to approach boats and, in turn, allow boats to approach them. In this way, the main threats suffered by these animals are habitat loss, anthropic disturbances (caused by humans) , entanglement in fishing nets and collisions with boats.
During the spring and summer seasons, they frequent the waters of Canada and New England , where precisely all the deaths of this last year have occurred , to feed after giving birth in warmer areas at low latitude.
“You have to use the word extinction because that’s where the trend lines say they are,” said John Bullard , as Regional Administrator for Noaa Fisheries. “That is something we cannot allow to happen.”
It is estimated that females are the most affected and only 100 young of this genus remain. To this must be added the aggravation that, by nature, female North Atlantic right whales only give birth every 3 or 4 years.
A fight that does not stop
The North Atlantic right whales lived in a similar context at the beginning of the 20th century . However, the current rates are no better, revealing that their condition has only gotten worse.
Poor reproduction and the high mortality rate have marked 2017 for these aquatic mammals. But this situation has been warned by scientists since 2010, when the number of specimens began to decrease alarmingly.
Numerous scientific studies have focused on this issue and have tried to determine why the number of whale deaths has skyrocketed . One of the possible answers is that whales could be endangered by venturing outside protected areas in search of food . In addition, it has been shown that, when an animal suffers long entanglements in fishing nets, it undergoes high stress , negatively affecting its ability to reproduce.
Mark Murray-Brown , consultant for NOOA’s Endangered Species Act, says the United States and Canada must work immediately to reduce whale deaths.
With all this panorama, it is not surprising that the North Atlantic right whales are among the most endangered of the great cetaceans .
