October 23, 2017 โ NEW BEDFORD, MASS. โ Whale scholars, lobstermen, conservationists and government officials converged Sunday in Nova Scotia to save right whales.
โEverybody is running out of adjectives,โ Defenders of Wildlife attorney Jane Davenport said of the death of 12 North Atlantic right whales since June in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and another three off the U.S., totaling 3 percent of the total population. โItโs apocalyptic. It really is.โ
At the annual North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium meeting in Halifax, right whale researchers released their latest population tally of 451 for 2016, typically counted with a yearโs lag. But itโs easy to see where next yearโs number is headed given the 15 known deaths and only five known births, said consortium chairman Mark Baumgartner, a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientist.
โ2017 will be another year of decline,โ Baumgartner said.
In early October, the Defenders of Wildlife and three other conservation groups sent a 60-day notice of intent to sue the National Marine Fisheries Service for failure to protect North Atlantic right whales from fishing gear entanglement, believed by researchers to be one of two primary right whale killers, along with ship strikes.