A pair of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales, a mom and her calf, were recently spotted just off the shores of Merritt Island.
Fewer than 400 members of the species are left, according to Oceana, an international ocean conservation advocacy group. Nora Ives is a marine scientist with Oceana.
“They are called the right whale because they were ‘the right whale to hunt,’” Ives said. “So we did a really good job of hunting them during industrial whaling.”
Since the 1930s, North Atlantic right whales have had international protections. Still, the species hasn’t recovered to a sustainable population. That’s solely due to two human-caused threats, Ives said: entanglement in fishing gear and boat strikes.
Even though a fully-grown North Atlantic right whale is huge — the size of a school bus — it can still be hard to see in the water, Ives said. “They don't have a dorsal fin. And they're very dark in color.”
The whales’ calving and nursing season is from mid-November to mid-April. They migrate south for the nursing season, leaving their feeding area off the shores of New England and Canada. Once settled down south, the mother-calf pairs will spend a lot of time near the surface of the water while the babies learn to breathe.
During the whales’ nursing season, boats 65 feet or longer must travel no faster than 10 knots, or about 11-and-a-half miles an hour, within a federally-designated seasonal management area. That area stretches from South Georgia to North Florida. But the mama-and-calf pair spotted near Merritt Island were outside those boundaries.
“These mom and calves were spotted south of the management area, which is why we're just asking everyone to slow down. … ‘Go slow for those below’ while the whales are in your backyard this winter,” Ives said.
In the United States, North Atlantic right whales are currently protected by the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. This year, lawmakers have been weighing proposed rollbacks of some protections in both laws.
Ives and her colleagues are among the many environmental advocates urging lawmakers to preserve the laws.
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“These laws work,” Ives said. “They came into place with broad bipartisan support. And since the ESA, for example, has been signed into law, we've protected 99% of the species that have been listed under that from extinction.”
Last week, members of the Natural Resources Committee of the House of Representatives advanced the proposed ESA changes. A public comment period for the proposed ESA changes will close on Monday, Dec. 22.
The recent mama-and-calf sighting in Brevard County was reported via WhaleMap, a public data platform allowing users to log whale sightings in close to real time. The data is monitored by researchers and government agencies.
If you see a whale, you can also report it by calling 877-WHALEHELP.
