November 18, 2019 — The future continues to grow ever darker for the highly endangered right whale, a species that has been in decline every year since 2010 and is at the heart of regulatory protection efforts threatening to upend Maine’s valuable lobster fishery.
The North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium estimates only 409 whales survived 2018, down from about 428 in 2017 and 457 in 2016. With seven births and 10 documented deaths in 2019 factored in, that tally is now probably about 406. Three of those are about to succumb to injuries.
“We are in yet another year of decline for the right whales,” said Mark Baumgartner, a researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and chairman of the consortium, which kicked off its annual right whale meeting Thursday in Portland. “This is extremely concerning.”
The meeting attracted hundreds of scientists, policymakers, animal rights advocates and several dozen curious fishermen. Topics ranged from new developments in how to safely tag a right whale to a review of right whale deaths in 2019 to the impact of whale-related fishery closures in Canada.