Just in time for the holidays, a special gift has arrived for the North Atlantic Right Whale community: a newborn calf.
The whale population’s version of “baby new year” was recently born to Medusa, a North Atlantic Right Whale who frequents the waters of Massachusetts and Cape Cod bays in winter and spring before summering in the Gulf of Maine.
Gib Brogan, a fisheries campaign manager at Oceana — an international advocacy group that works to protect the world’s oceans — on Friday reported that mother and calf were first observed on Dec. 7 by researchers with the Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute in the southern reaches of the critically endangered animals’ east coast habitat. The pair was swimming in St. Catherines Sound off the coast of Georgia.
With the North Atlantic Right Whales’ severely precarious existence, nobody wants to see a calving season like the one in 2019, when there were no births, said Brogan, who called that season “disastrous.”
“I was getting a little anxious as it moved into the middle of December and we still hadn’t seen a calf,” said Brogan, who helps lead Oceana’s fight to save North Atlantic right whales from extinction and also oversees the organization’s work with recreational fishermen on common conservation goals.
A video the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Resource Division posted Dec. 8 on Twitter with the announcement “THE FIRST RIGHT WHALE CALF OF THE SEASON HAS BEEN SPOTTED!” tickles right whale observers like Brogan pink. He said the video shows what looks to be “a very happy calf” and a contented mother.
“I’m not much of a whale whisperer,” Brogan said, “but that calf looked very energetic in that video.”
Pilot whales:Rescuers continued efforts as the whales re-stranded, this time in Wellfleet
‘It’s become an event’: Right whale births are truly a cause for celebration
Each year, as the North Atlantic Right Whales make their way south to what can be called their maternity ward, both professional researchers and interested casual observers watch anxiously for the births to begin.
“It’s become an event, as well it should be,” Brogan said, pointing out how critical the growth of the population is toward moving the whales away from the brink of extinction.
In October, the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium released its latest count of the critically endangered species’ population. According to the most recent whale census, only about 340 of the animals — plus or minus seven — remained during 2021. And it was cause for concern.
Previously in The Times:Report: North Atlantic right whales continuing to decline
While the population estimate is important, the more significant factor for scientists is the trend the numbers show, according to Heather Pettis, a research scientist at the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life and executive administrator of the consortium.
“With this assessment we see that the downward trend (in the right whale population) is continuing,” she said in October. “That’s the big take home — the species is trending down, which is not good.”
So it comes as no great surprise that Medusa’s new calf is raising a collective cheer among scientists, conservationists and concerned observers alike, although there is still a good amount of finger-crossing taking place.
“Each new calf certainly provides a glimmer of hope for the future,” said Amy Warren, a research assistant in the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, “but it’s important to recognize the daily struggles these whales must face in our dynamic ocean.”
North Atlantic right whales, one of the most endangered large mammals in the world, face multiple environmental challenges, both man-made and natural. The whales are frequently victims of entanglement in traditional fishing gear that relies on ropes, and vessel strikes, which hinder their ability to thrive, reproduce and successfully raise a calf. Changing conditions in the ocean owing to climate change also affect the population.
“My hope is that we can continue working to clear their path so that each addition can bring more than just cautious optimism,” Warren said.
The New England Aquarium provides support to survey teams in the southeast calving grounds, she said.
“As curators of the North Atlantic Right Whale Catalog, we assist with confirming individual identification of right whales and keeping track of sampling efforts,” Warren said. “The extensive catalog allows us to know histories of whales like Medusa, the first mom of the calving season.”
Seven times a mother, Medusa’s success is increasingly rare for right whales
Medusa, listed in the catalog as whale #1208, was first seen in 1981 in Massachusetts Bay. With this latest birth, she has now had a total seven calves that scientists know of.
“Three of her previous calves are still seen regularly in Massachusetts waters,” Warren said.
Medusa was last observed in Massachusetts Bay on April 19, 2021. And she was last spotted in Cape Cod Bay a few weeks prior to that, on March 21 — both sightings were reported by scientists with the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown. But the last time she was observed with a calf at her side was in mid March 2012, off the coast of Florida.
The first time Medusa was seen with a calf was in April of 1985, in Massachusetts Bay, according to data in the catalog. Other sightings of Medusa with a calf occurred in 1991, 1996, 2002-2003, and 2008, showing she was giving birth about every four to six years. The stretch between her last documented calving and this year’s birth is the longest, at 10 years, which could be an indication of another concerning trend scientists are seeing in the right whale population.
The few reproductively active females left in the population are giving birth at greater intervals. Instead of a calving interval of three years, the trend is now closer to six to 10 years, according to Sarah Sharp, a marine mammal veterinarian at the International Fund For Animal Welfare, which has an office in Yarmouthport,
Right whales gestate for a little more than a year, but they don’t actually reach reproductive age until they are about 9 or 10 years old. That becomes additionally troublesome when the whales are likely to die as a result of entanglement and vessel strike injuries before they can reach that age.Also problematic is the dearth of females among the whales. Charles “Stormy” Mayo, director of the right whale ecology program at the Center for Coastal Studies, has said the number of whales have only gone down since about 2010, from a population of close to 500 animals. Part of the problem, he said earlier this fall, is low numbers of breeding females, “therefore very low calving rates,” combined with “very high mortality rates.”
Sharp corroborates that observation. She has noted that, as a whole, the population has more males than females in it — it is estimated there are presently only about 72 reproductively active females in the population, lower than a previous estimate of 90.
‘Mothers and calves need protection now’: Why birthing time is a critical time for right whales
Calving grounds off the coasts of northeast Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina have been designated Critical Habitat Areas to help protect the species, according to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute.
“Through aerial surveys, the CMARI team works together to protect the species,” said Dr. James Powell, president and executive director of the institute. “Recovery had been slow and steady until 2010 when we started to see a decline. Most recent population models show that the numbers are declining again for various reasons, including a slow reproduction rate, threats from entanglement in fishing gear, collisions with large vessels, and possibly other factors not yet identified.”
Small boats are also a danger to whales
The North Atlantic right whale is a federally protected endangered species under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute aerial survey teams work with NOAA, Georgia DNR, South Carolina DNR, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,U.S. Coast Guard Atlantic Area Command, U.S. Navy, and FWC to mitigate ship collisions and document reproductive rates.
They also provide scientific data to marine decision makers on conserving the species, assist efforts to disentangle whales from fishing gear, locate carcasses for recovery and necropsies, and assist with locating whales for genetic sampling and satellite tagging.
Brogan is among many who’ve been monitoring the whales who are pressing for more urgent action to be taken, including enacting immediate vessel speed reduction zones for vessels of all sizes up and down the coast. Massachusetts, for one, already regulates speeds and includes smaller vessels in the restrictions, but that’s not the case everywhere.
“Every time we see calves, this is a good sign because it shows there are mothers that are healthy enough to give birth,” he said. “But this is a species that is under chronic stress from a number of different sides. Our concern is that mothers and calves don’t have enough protection from the boat traffic that’s around them.”
He noted the mothers and their young spend a lot of time at the surface, which is the danger zone when it comes to boating activity. Last year, in February, Brogan said a recreational boat that was operating within regulations struck a mother and calf pair in southern waters.
“That killed the calf, and the mother hasn’t been seen since,” Brogan said. “It’s a cautionary tale that these whales are down there. But the current regulations don’t cover those smaller boats.”
While there are ongoing, widespread efforts to enact legislation to further regulate boating, as well as fishing, organizations like Oceana are pressing for the federal government to enact emergency rules that will protect the whales from the smaller boats now.
“These mothers and calves need protection now, sooner than next year,” Brogan said.
Medusa and her calf are far from isolated as they swim the southern waters, he pointed out. “A good number of whales have been seen by the aerial surveys down there,” he said.
Estimated to be about 42 years old, Medusa is a great story of survival despite the many challenges right whales face. Sadly, though, stories of critical entanglements, vessel strikes and resulting deaths are too frequent, such as is the case with another well-known individual: Snow Cone, a chronically entangled female who was seen in late September struggling with her fifth entanglement just south of Nantucket. Scientists said her condition was grim and they feared she was dying, but with Hurricane Fiona advancing, they could not safely launch a rescue effort.
Reported in September:A whale and species on the brink. The end may be near for chronically entangled Snow Cone
Brogan said that was the last time anyone saw Snow Cone — thought to be the last of her bloodline, and also to have lost both of her calves, one to a boat strike. Besides being on alert for new births, he said, “we are on Snow Cone watch and hoping for the best.”
Hoping, as always, because even the loss of just one individual is a devastating blow to a population teetering on the precipice between recovery and the point of no return. In the spirit of hopefulness, the New England Aquarium has a calving season blog, which will be updated with bios of each mom and baby as scientists there receive news from the U.S. calving ground. The blog can be found at www.neaq.org/blog/2022-2023-north-atlantic-right-whale-mother-and-calf-pairs/
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