SAVANNAH, Ga. – Wildlife officials and conservationists are seeing fewer newborn right whales than they had hoped to see this winter off the coasts of Georgia and Florida.
Right whales are critically endangered, with experts estimating only about 450 of the giant marine mammals still exist. So conservationists keep a close watch during the winter calving season by conducting daily aerial surveys aimed at spotting whale mothers swimming with their newborns.
So far, researchers have spotted just nine baby right whales more than midway through the calving season, which runs from December through March. About 20 calves are spotted in an average season.
“It’s been a slow season for sure,” Clay George, lead marine mammal biologist for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, told the Savannah Morning News.
Hunted the brink of extinction in the 1800s, north Atlantic right whales feed off the coast of New England in the summertime before pregnant females migrate to warmer waters off Georgia and Florida each winter to give birth. It’s the only known calving area off the Atlantic coast. Entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with ships now pose some of the greatest threats to their survival.