Warming oceans have driven the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale population from its traditional and protected habitat, exposing the animals to more lethal ship strikes, disastrous commercial fishing entanglements and greatly reduced calving rates.
Warming oceans have driven the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale population from its traditional and protected habitat, exposing the animals to more lethal ship strikes, disastrous commercial fishing entanglements and greatly reduced calving rates.
Without improving its management, the right whale populations will decline and potentially become extinct in the coming decades, according to a Cornell- and University of South Carolina-led report in the Sept. 1 journal Oceanography.
“Most of the warming in the Gulf of Maine is not coming from the atmosphere or ocean surface, as one may think,” said senior author Charles Greene, professor emeritus in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “It is coming from invading slope water many hundreds of feet below the ocean surface, forcing the right whales to abandon their traditional habitat.”
Since 2010, the calving rate has declined and the right whale population has dropped by an estimated 26%, according to the paper. At the beginning of the decade, the North Atlantic right whale population had numbered over 500. Now, the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium estimates the population at just 356 whales.
Read more at Cornell University
Photo Credit: NikkyS via Pixabay
