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Defenders Magazine
Species Spotlight: The Right Whale
Their name betrays the cause of their downfall: big, slow animals that float when killed, these were considered the "right," or best, whales to hunt. In the 19th century alone, more than 100,000 of them were slaughtered for oil, meat, corset stays and other products.
So few were left by 1935 that the right whale hunt was called off. Subsequently protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act and international agreements, right whales are still among the rarest of animals. Only about 300 live in the North Atlantic and perhaps 100 in the North Pacific—and both face threats from ship strikes, pollution and entanglement with fishing gear.
It takes a lot of food to fill the bellies of these 50- to 60-foot-long behemoths—as much as two or three tons a day. The rights filter this food (mostly small crustaceans and shrimp-like animals) out of the sea using their hair-covered baleen plates, which can reach almost 10 feet in length.
Despite their bulk, rights are known for their breaching, lob-tailing, flipper slapping and "sailing"—a kind of water headstand where their tail acts as a sail, pushing them downwind. The animals communicate among themselves with a variety of moans and burps that, to a human listener, sounds like an uncle on a couch after Thanksgiving Day dinner.
Last summer, scientists stated that northern right whale deaths may be underreported by as much as 83 percent annually—making their condition even more precarious. In response, Defenders is pushing the federal government to take steps to slow and reroute ship traffic in whale habitat—trying to stop the wrong being done to the right whale.
