Every year at the end of November, theAquarium right whale aerial survey teamheads south to set up a field station onAmelia Island’s Fernandina Beach innorthern Florida. Around the same time,pregnant North Atlantic right whales, aswell as some juveniles and other adults,also make the 1,500-mile journey fromNorthern waters (without the conve-nience of I-95), to the critical habitat off the coast of Florida and Georgia. It isthe only known calving ground of NorthAtlantic right whales, but it is also crisscrossed by shipping lanes and has an astounding amount of vessel traffic.Between December 1 and March 31, theAquarium team flies aerial surveys withinthe critical habitat from Cumberland

Island, Ga., to south of JacksonvilleBeach, Fla. Our surveys, along with thoseof aerial teams to the north and south ofus, are part of an Early Warning System(EWS). The Aquarium flies the CentralEWS surveys, conducted on pre-deter-mined tracklines that stretch more than30 nautical miles (nm) from shore andcover more than 1,000 square nm ofocean. When an aerial team sights a rightwhale, a notification is sent to local, state,federal, non-profit and commercialmarine interests in the form of a page,email or text. These sighting alerts haveinformation on the whales’ exact locationand were established to notify vessel traffic of the whales’ presence in order

The Calving Ground Field Season 2010

How Are the North Atlantic Right Whales Doing?

Piper’s Calf—A Wonderful Surprise

Mother Right Whales ChangeSome Patterns—But Why?

Mortality, Entanglement and Injury Update

Naval Training Range Is Challengedby Conservation Groups

Sponsored Whale Update

Review of the Results and Implications ofRecent Historical DNA Analysis

Right Whale Calving and the Winter of 2010

Gift Ideas

A Decade’s Worth of Thanks!!!

Editor:Marilyn Marx

Contributors:Jonathan CunhaPhilip HamiltonRobert D. KenneyAmy KnowltonBrenna McLeodJessica TaylorAmanda ThompsonMonica A. Zani

In this newsletter all photographs of right whales in U.S. waters were taken under NMFS/NOAA permitunder the authority of the Marine Mammal ProtectionAct and the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

Right Whale Research News is produced and published by the New England Aquarium.We welcome your comments and suggestions!

In this issue:

Volume 19, Number 1May 2010

Read more about a particular aspectof our project at www.neaq.org.

Continued on page 2

05-10 AG/500

The Right Whale Research Team aboard Neried, in Lubec, Maine.

What a busy and ultimately successful decade we have had here!Diverting shipping lanes, developing the first right whale pregnancy test using fecal samples and creating federal regulations to slow down ships in right whale habitats, just toname a few of our accomplishments. And we couldn’t have doneit without your generous support! Because of that, we decidedthat for this edition of the Right Whale Research News we wouldtake a retrospective look at the last 10 years to show what yourfunds have been used for in this past decade:� Travel to and participation in Implementation Team meetings

responsible for the recovery of right whales under the Endangered Species Act

� Travel to numerous professional conferences, meetings and symposiums including:The Marine Mammal Biennial Conferences on the Biology of Marine Mammals:

2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2009

The International Association for Aquatic Medicine Conference in Texas

The International Marine Conservation Congress in Washington, DC

The Vessel Quieting Symposium in Silver Spring, MD

A Genetics Lab meeting at Trent University in Ontario, Canada

The annual Right Whale Consortium meeting in New Bedford, MA

And many more….

� Supplies to support field studies including:Research cameras, lenses, lens filters and batteries

Dry ice and postage cost for shipping collected biological samples

Propane for heating the Right Whale Field Station

� Life raft annual inspections� Travel and supplies for disentanglement efforts� Publications fees� Research vessel repair and fuel costs� Purchase of software and corresponding equipment

A Decade’s Worth of Thanks!!!

� Sponsorship Program upgrades� Enhancement and promotion of educational efforts about right whales � Monthly fees for an offsite web-based file storage site for secure

transmission of data files from field teams to the main office.� Monthly fees to cover usage charges for a satellite phone and house

phone used during our field efforts

As you can see, your generous contributions have been used in awide variety of ways, so thank you very much for your support!

Catalog #1950 and her calf in the waters off Florida in January 2010. Photo: Georgia Department of Natural Resources. Permit #775-1875.

The Calving Ground Field Season 2010By Jessica Taylor

for them to avoid vessel-whale collisions.

It was a relatively slow start to the2010 field season. Storms, fog, rain andwind always infringe upon our surveyefforts (since we need clear weather andrelatively calm seas in which to see andphotograph whales), so we are never ableto fly all 121 days that we are based inFlorida. However this year we experi-enced more severe weather than average,with little respite. Maybe this can beexplained by the effects of the NorthAtlantic Oscillation, and/or an El Niñoyear (see Right Whale Calving…). Thesephenomena may be responsible forFlorida’s anomalous, severe winter, but forus it meant we couldn’t fly as much as wewould have liked—only 14 survey days inall of December!

With plenty of down time, we spentmany days training, covering theoreticalscenarios, but only experience can fullyprepare you for those busy days that comelater in the season—a day like we had onMarch 9, when the team sighted 40whales on that single day! Compare that to the 45 whales sighted during theentire month of December! The sighting conditions were ideal and the team spent8.3 hours flying a standard Central EWS

survey, which covers two major shippingchannels serving two commercial ports,two military bases and a whole slew ofrecreational day trippers. Observers werekept busy, with groups of right whales inthe vicinity of a major channel and lots ofvessel traffic to monitor.

There is always a possibility that awhale’s presence on the calving groundscould go undetected. This may be due topoor sighting conditions: High winds create rough surface waters, and largeswells result from storms. Or a whale’sbehavior might affect sightability: It couldbe on a dive when the survey team passedby at 100 mph, our standard survey speed.But this year there was a good likelihoodthat individuals were missed due to theextensive inclement weather that ground-ed aerial teams. For instance, the first calf of the year wasn’t observed untilDecember 22 (two other new calves weresighted by aerial teams that same day). Incontrast, the first calf last year was sightednearly a month earlier, on November 25.It’s possible that this late detection couldbe explained by less frequent surveys dur-ing the first few weeks of December, orperhaps the colder water temperaturesdelayed the season’s calving activity.

The colder weather did appear to havean affect on the distribution of whales.By mid-season typically the most rightwhale sightings are within the Central

EWS survey area, but this year there werea lot of sightings much farther south. OnJanuary 1, 2010, a report came from adredge of an adult right whale approxi-mately 4 nm north of North Palm Beach,Fla. This is over 170 nm south of theSeasonal Management Area establishedby NOAA Fisheries! Southern sightingsin areas where there are currently no consistent aerial surveys were reported byalternative sources such as recreationalboaters, the U.S. Coast Guard, dive operations and charter boats. The multitude of sightings off of PortCanaveral and Sebastian Inlet initiatedthe establishment of a DynamicManagement Area, a temporary designation to alert vessels to go slow or, if possible, reroute around the area.

At the end of our final flight onMarch 31, there had been 19 mother/calfpairs sighted in the southeast criticalhabitat/calving ground. Although thisnumber is lower than the average since2001 (24 per year), it is still an encourag-ing addition to the population comparedto the slump we saw between 1990 and2000 (average 10 per year). Four of the 19 were first time mothers in 2010, butunfortunately one, Catalog #3260, losther calf later in the season (see Mortality,Entanglement…). We were very happy totrack the progression of Dragon (Catalog#3180) and her calf this year, since she

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Calving Ground Field Season 2010Continued from page 1

lost her first born in the 2008 season.The oldest mother this season wasCatalog #1145— she is over 29 years oldand this was her seventh known calf. Allof the first time mothers were at least 9years old, which is the typical age forviable reproduction in North Atlanticright whales.

Although the season was slow to getstarted, it was hard to close up the fieldstation knowing that there were stillwhales to the south, that would inevitablypass through the offshore waters ofFernandina Beach as they began theirnortherly migration. As late as March 29there was a report of a mother/calf pairoff of Flagler Beach, about 25 nm southof St Augustine, Florida. When we headed south for the winter months wecertainly weren’t prepared for the frozenpipes, delays waiting for frost to melt offthe aircraft’s wings and snowfalls inFlorida forecasts. I wonder if the whaleswere better prepared. With environmentalconditions limiting survey effort it is hardto know how severe weather systemsaffect these well-insulated mammals.

We’ve returned to Boston and nowbegin the long process of analyzing thephotos and data we collected over thefour months of the Southeast field season.We know the right whales are also mak-ing their way north. The ProvincetownCenter for Coastal Studies Cape Cod Bayaerial survey team recently reported theirfirst few mother/calf pairs of the season,including Catalog #1145. As mentionedabove, she is the oldest and most experienced mother this year, and she’ssuccessfully made the same migrationwith at least seven different calves! We hope all the right whales have a safejourney up the coast, and we look forwardto seeing many of them in the Bay ofFundy come August.

With only her chin and flipper above the water surface, Catolog #1950 rolls next to her calf in the waters off of Florida in January 2010.Photo: Georgia Department of Natural Resources. Permit #775-1875.

How Are North AtlanticRight Whales Doing? Amy Knowlton

As curators of the North Atlantic Right Whale Catalog, we are often askedabout the status of this population. There are many ways to measure whether a population is growing, declining or remaining stable. Some of the metricsinclude number of calves born annually, number of reproductive females,minimum number of animals considered alive by year and the number of animals presumed to be alive. This latter analysis—the number of animals presumed to be alive—is a method we developed in the 1990s to monitor this population. Basically it is an annual count of the number of animals seen within the previous five years and in the given year. An animal not seen in the previous five years becomes presumed dead at the end of the sixth year.For example, if an animal was seen in 2004 and hasn’t been seen since, itwould be considered presumed dead in 2010. In a limited number of cases,an individual ends up having a sighting gap of longer than six years and thusneeds to be added back into the population. We refer to these events as resurrections. In the old days (before we got smart), we used to manually tallythe number of presumed living animals. Now we can query the database andcalculate this number in seconds versus hours. The graph below shows thisannual tally from 1990 through 2008. As you can see, during the 1990s population growth was fairly static. This was a result of low calf counts andhigh levels of mortality. Starting in 2001, calf counts have been much higherthan in the previous two decades, resulting in a fairly steady increase in population size. The population size is close to 450 animals, up from justunder 300 in 1990. Though this population size is still extremely small (similar in size to some graduating high school classes!), we remain optimisticthat this population has a chance to recover as long as we remain vigilant inour efforts to reduce human-related mortalities.

Annual tally of the number of right whales presumed to be alive from 1990 through 2008.

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Each winter we watch as newborn calvesappear by their mothers’ side and we keepour fingers crossed for their well-being.Occasionally, the carcass of a calf will bediscovered, and we quickly try to deter-mine whether it is one that we hadalready seen with its mother, or if it’s acalf that we had not yet documented. Butin most cases, we only can guess at a calf ’ssurvival based on later sightings of themother without her calf (that is, if she issighted alone repeatedly during the firstyear, we assume she lost the calf ), or bythe mother’s inter-birth interval (if amother has a two-year interval betweencalves—rather than the typical three ormore years—it is very likely that her previous calf died and she did not experience the substantial physiologicaltoll of nursing a calf for a year).

In 2006, there were 19 mothers seen with calves and four dead calves

documented. We knew the mothers ofthree of those four because they were allseen repeatedly without their calves afterthe bodies were discovered. But the mother of the fourth dead calf remainedunknown. Its carcass was found in theBay of Fundy in July after having been hitand killed by a vessel. Of the 19 knownmothers identified in 2006, two couldhave been the mother of this dead calf(the other 17 were either seen with theircalves after July or were already known tohave lost their calves in the southeastU.S): Catalog #2420—a whale rarely seenin the well surveyed habitats—and Piper(Catalog #2320), one of our sponsorshipwhales. In the 13 years we had beenwatching Piper she had never been seenwith a calf until 2006, so we hoped theyoung one would survive. Although therewas little identifiable information on thedead calf, what little was there looked like

it could match Piper’s calf.Well, just a few months ago I was

reviewing images of a whale that appearedto be new to the Catalog and I started tocompare it to Piper’s 2006 calf. At first, itwas just a cursory glance because I knewthat Piper’s calf was likely dead. But as Ilooked more closely, I could feel my heartquicken. The lip ridges matched up, thepatches of callosity along the mandibles,the callosity on the head! Almost fouryears after we suspected its demise andjust a year after Piper gave birth to hersecond calf, we confirmed that her firstcalf had in fact survived. She has yet to benamed, but Catalog #3670 has been seenin the southeast U.S. and the Bay ofFundy every year since her birth. Inanother six years or so, we may see herwith her own calf.

The identity of the dead calf ’s motherremains a mystery, but these moments ofhappy discovery are what make sitting infront of a computer looking at images ingreat detail all worthwhile!

The same whale as a 2 1/2-year-old in the Bay of Fundy, September 2008. Note the sametwo islands, which now appear white becauseof the cyamids. Photo: Cyndi Browning/NEAq

Piper’s calf swims near Race Point Beach on Cape Cod in April 2006. Note the location of the two“islands” of callosity in the middle of the head. Photo: Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies, Permit #633-1763

Piper’s Calf—A Wonderful SurpriseBy Philip Hamilton

Mother RightWhales ChangeSome Patterns—But Why?Philip Hamilton

Perhaps the most important aspect of ourwork is to monitor reproduction in thispopulation. Starting in the winter of2002, we noticed an interesting change inthe behavior of many mother rightwhales: They appeared to be staying withtheir calves for longer than they did dur-ing the first 20 years of our study. LindsayCooper and I decided to explore this andwrite a brief note about the behavior forpublication in a peer-reviewed scientificjournal. Well, that investigation expandedand uncovered an interesting and complicated story that we still do notfully understand. Our findings have been accepted by the journal MarineMammal Science and will be publishedlater this year.

As background, most calves are bornduring the winter months off the south-east U.S. coast. The mother/calf rightwhale pairs, after residing in the coastalwaters of Florida and Georgia for two orthree months, migrate northward duringthe spring. They are last seen together onthe northern feeding grounds in the latefall (9 to 10 months after the calf ’s birth);thus we have assumed that the calves areweaned by the end of their first year.Before 1993, there had only been threerecords of these pairs staying togetherinto the second year. This patternappeared to change starting with the 2001mothers, 12 of which stayed with theircalves into the second year! This behaviorcontinued for several years, with one tofive mothers exhibiting this behaviorannually through 2005, when our analysisended. But even more interesting is thatmany of the mothers and calves thatstayed together also swam back to thecalving ground off the southeast U.S. Thisbehavior makes little sense on the surface,because a female loses up to one third of

her body weight nursing her calf in thefirst year, and there is little to no food forher in the southeast U.S. Why swim morethan 1,000 miles to a foodless habitatwhen you are at your weakest? And whydid they first exhibit this behavior 20years into our study?

The first step was to determinewhether female right whales have beendoing this for years and we just hadn’tdetected it. There had been severalchanges over the years that complicatedthis question: limited surveys in thesoutheast U.S. during the early years, fewcalves born to the population after thesurvey effort improved there, and a dra-matic increase in calving starting in 2001.After a very thorough review of all thesefactors, we were able to determine thatthis extended maternal investment hadnot occurred from 1993 to 2000, but it isless clear if it could have happened in the1980s, when survey efforts in the south-east U.S. were sparse.

Many mammals change their invest-ment in their offspring depending on thesex of the young, the age or experience of the mother or the amount of availablefood. During our investigation, we discov-ered that the sex of the calf and the age of the mother had no bearing on themother’s behavior, but the experience ofthe mother did. That is, the more calves amother had previously, the less likely shewas to stay with her current calf into thesecond year. Again, this was unexpectedas most experienced mammals are likelyto devote more resources to their youngbecause they have the physical size andlife experience that allows them to sustaina larger physiological draw.

So how do we best explain what happened in the early part of the 2000s?The best explanation we could tease outof this complicated situation is that theless experienced mothers gave birth tolighter calves (not proved, but the first

Continued on page 6

Catalog #3360 and her yearling swim in the waters off northern Florida in December 2007. Photo: Gabriela Munoz/NEAq, Permit #655-1652.

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When I sat down to write this article,I fleetingly thought that, for the firsttime, I didn’t need to refer to my notebook, in which I keep track of thevarious events. I wondered: Do I really not have that much to write?Can I really count the mortalities,entanglements and new injuries ofright whales since the last newsletteron one hand? But as I began toreview a few notes, lists and docu-ments, I realized my initial thoughtswere incorrect. Sadly, once again, Ihave a lot to report. In each newslet-ter we attempt to keep you up to dateon the recent mortalities, entangle-ment cases and newly documented injuries to right whales in this population. This can be a struggle, and honestly, rather depressing.But with each article there is also a sense ofrenewed energy that inspires us to keep working to eliminate anthropogenic sources of mortality and injury.

MortalitiesOn December 19, 2009, a U.S. CoastGuard (USCG) Falcon jet documented alarge whale carcass approximately 60 to 70miles southeast of Nantucket. This loca-tion is close to the convergence of theBoston Harbor Traffic Lane and theAmbrose-Nantucket Traffic Lane near theGreat South Channel. The images takenconfirmed that it was a right whale,however there was not enough informa-tion for an individual identification to bemade. Unfortunately, the carcass was neverrelocated, so that whale’s ID and cause ofdeath remain unknown.

On February 24, 2010 the Aquarium’saerial survey team was delighted to document Catalog #3260 with a calf off the coast of Florida. The sighting wasvery exciting since they had just seen herthe day before without a calf! However,

about a week later on March 1, Catalog#3260 was once again sighted but she was alone. Subsequent sightings of her in March confirmed that her calf is definitely gone and is now considereddead. A newborn calf cannot survive without the protection and nourishmentof its mother.

InjuriesIn December 2009, Catalog #3745, a 3-year-old male, was documented with aseries of new wounds on his back causedby a boat’s propellers. There is no way todetermine when or where the incidenttook place, only that it happened some-time within the past year, since he wasdocumented in February 2009 without the prop wounds.

Last spring, a 50-foot NOAA researchvessel struck a right whale when en routeback to port in Massachusetts. They wereable to document the resulting injury,which was a series of propeller cuts nearthe left fluke tip. Identified as Catalog#3590, a 5-year-old female, she has been sighted twice since the strike — last summer in Roseway Basin and morerecently off the coast of South Carolina by

aerial surveys. Her wound is slowly heal-ing but we remain concerned about thiswhale and hope to obtain additional ship-board images in the future to better docu-ment her injury and current condition.

Entanglements New Entanglement Events: Although ourlast newsletter came out in December2009, we had reported on new entangle-ments only through September 2009.However, we have since learned that onThanksgiving Day (November 26) arecreational boater off Cape LookoutShoals, N.C., sighted and photographedan entangled right whale. The orientationof the entangling gear was not fullyunderstood due to limited photo-documentation. The whale was identifiedas the 2008 calf of Catalog #1208.Fortunately, this whale was sighted againon January 13, 2010, off the coast ofSt. Augustine, Fla. and was confirmed to be gear free!

Entanglement Updates: Our last newsletter described the events of the disentanglement of Mavynne (Catalog#1151) by the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies (PCCS)Disentanglement Team (See TheEntanglement and..., RWRN Vol. 18 (2)December 2009). Mavynne was one of the39 mother/calf pairs for 2009, and therewas some concern about the fate of her calf since it was not seen with herduring her disentanglement. Could thecalf have been entangled too? Is it alive?These questions were answered this winter when aerial survey teams sightedMavynne’s 2009 calf (now a yearling) inthe southeast U.S. critical habitat/calvingground and it appeared to be in good condition. Mavynne has not been re-sighted since the disentanglement,but we are hopeful that she fully recovered from her ordeal.

You may also remember that in thatsame newsletter article we reported onanother 2009 calf that we were concernedabout. Baldy’s (Catalog #1240) 2009 calfhad been documented during our 2009Bay of Fundy field season with severeentanglement wounds around the tailstock. Just as Mavynne’s calf had done,

and second born of most mammals aresmaller than subsequent offspring) andwhen mothers are in robust physicalcondition, they will allocate moreresources to those lighter young to getthem to an adequate weaning weight.There are several additional indicationsthat right whales were not in goodphysical condition in the 1990s andthus would not have been able to allocate more resources to their youngthen. However, if it were just about theweight of the calf, then all the femaleswould stay with their calves longer andalso stay on the feeding grounds, whereboth the mother and the calf couldfeed on solid food while the calf wasslowly weaned.

By returning their young to thewaters off the southeast U.S., many of the mothers likely provided some additional benefit to their offspring.The majority of all young whales arenow seen off the southeast U.S. duringthe winter (regardless of whether they are brought back there by theirmothers as yearlings), so the area hasstarted to hold more importance forthat demographic of the population.While in the area, these young animalsspend most of their time socializing—rolling and touching. It is my hypothe-sis that the development of socialbonds at a young age may help rightwhales find mates or food, or gain protection from predators at a later age.These social bonds may require a certain density of animals and theincrease in the number of calves starting in 2001 perhaps crossed thatthreshold. We have a long way to go before we can test this hypothesis.Until then, we will be keeping an eyeon those young that stayed with theirmothers longer to see whether they exhibit different survival or reproduction characteristics than others from their same age group.

On January 28, 2010,14 conservation groupsled by the SouthernEnvironmental LawCenter, Defenders ofWildlife, Earthjustice,Natural ResourcesDefense Council andthe Humane Society ofthe United Statesjoined forces to sue theU.S. Navy because oftheir intended plans tobuild a $100 millionUndersea WarfareTraining Range(USWTR) off thecoast of Florida, adja-cent to the only knowncalving ground forright whales. As thepress release describes,“After laying cablesthrough the 500 squarenautical mile training

Some Patterns ChangeContinued from page 5

Mortality,Entanglement and InjuryUpdateMonica A. Zani

Naval Training Range is Challenged by Conservation GroupsBy Amy Knowlton

Continued on page 8

Baldy’s 2009 calf migrated to the southeastand was sighted in January off the coast ofFlorida. Unfortunately, this sighting leftus with more cause for concern as theyearling appeared to be in much worsecondition and we fear for its survival.

Some of you might recognize the nameKingfisher, the right whale named after aUnited States Coast Guard cutter, becausewe have been updating you on this whale’sentanglement case for the past six years!Back in 2004, Kingfisher (Catalog #3346), was partially disentangled from gearthat wrapped around his body, yet a por-tion of the entanglement still remains—a large cluster of line around his right pectoral flipper. Kingfisher, a 7-year-oldmale, has been documented by aerial survey teams in the southeast U.S. criticalhabitat/calving ground this winter andappears to be in the same condition, still

entangled. We remain optimistic, but it isunknown how this prolonged entangle-ment will affect the whale in future years.

Another ongoing entanglement case isWart (Catalog #1140). Wart is an adult,reproductive female that has been entan-gled since 2008. She was most recentlysighted in Cape Cod Bay in April by thePCCS aerial survey team. Although herentanglement does not appear to be life-threatening (i.e. no tight wraps around anybody part and no heavy gear trailing), herchronic entanglement could have sublethalimpacts on her reproduction and survival.

Soon we will be back in the field in theBay of Fundy, and with a little luck and alot of dedication we will continue to docu-ment and assess these whales. I hope thatnext time around I will have a shorter listof events in my notebook and a more positive conclusion in all cases!

Propeller scars are clearly visible on the back of Catalog#3745. Right whales are vulnerable to vessel strikesbecause they swim slowly and spend much of their timeat or just below the water’s surface, making them difficultor impossible to see. They face severe injury and/ordeath from vessels of all sizes. Photo: Wildlife Trust

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know he eventually made his way up the coast to New England because theProvincetown Center for Coastal Studies(PCCS) aerial survey team sighted himskim feeding in Cape Cod Bay on April 12.

When we last saw Calvin (Catalog#2223) in the fall, she was in the Bay ofFundy with her calf. The winter passedwith no sightings of her, but at somepoint during those months she weanedand separated from her calf. This spring,PCCS sighted Calvin on four differentoccasions. She was seen in Cape Cod Bayon March 7, when she was traveling withCatalog #3308, and two weeks later,when she was echelon feeding (seeEchelon Feeding RWRN Vol.18 (1) May,2009) with two other whales: Catalog#2027 and Catalog #1170. Then on April3, she was photographed traveling alone,just a couple of miles east of Cape Cod,off Eastham. But on April 12, she wasback in the Bay, subsurface feeding. We’vealso recently confirmed that Calvin andher calf were seen in the Great SouthChannel last June, a sighting we were notaware of when we published our lastnewsletter. She was subsurface feedingwhen she was photographed by theNortheast Fisheries Science Center(NEFSC) aerial survey team. Because we are always processing incoming data,there are some sightings that are notreviewed until months later.

The Smithsonian’s favorite whale,Phoenix (Catalog #1705), has been seentwice since our last newsletter. NEFSCspotted her in December on Jordan Basin,the potential right whale mating ground,recently discovered (See Right WhaleSightings in Unusual Places. RWRN Vol.18(1) May, 2009). She was alone and “pos-turing”—a behavior in which a whalearches it’s back while lifting both thehead and flukes out of the water (sort oflike a big stretch). The most recent sight-ing of Phoenix was March 20, 2010,when she was photographed near GreatSouth Channel by PCCS. She was alonein that sighting, too, and traveling. Asalways, we’ve informed the SmithsonianInstitution of her recent sightings so theycan update her exhibit in the Sant OceanHall in Washington, DC.

Sponsored WhaleUpdateBy Jonathan Cunha

Our field team has just returned from theright whale calving ground where theyfound 19 new mother-calf pairs (See The Calving Ground…). Now, we begin tochip away at all the data collected over thefour-month calving season. None of oursponsored whales gave birth this year, butthat does not mean they weren’t sighted.We have updates on four of our six spon-sorship whales, Snowball, Shackleton,Calvin and Phoenix.

As we mentioned in our last issue,Snowball (Catalog #1131) was sighted byWhale Center of New England (WCNE)on Jeffreys Ledge last December (seeSponsored Whale Update, RWRN Vol 18(2), December 2009). As we continue toprocess WCNE’s data, we’ve discoveredthat they also photographed Snowball inthe same area in October and November2009; he was seen once a month duringthe three-month period. In the Octobersighting he was with Catalog #2602, inNovember he was alone and traveling fast,and in December he was traveling anddiving. Three months later, in March2010, Snowball was spotted in waters offGeorgia by Wildlife Trust’s aerial surveyteam. His reason for heading 1,200 milessouth to the calving ground is a mystery,but there is one thing we can say for cer-tain—he was definitely not going downthere to give birth! In recent years wehave noticed that some adult males tendto show up in the southeast U.S. towardthe end of the calving season. We are puz-zled by these forays so far from the feed-ing grounds, but, perhaps to a whale, sucha journey is akin to us taking a long hike– exhausting but a nice change of pace.

Another adult male seen on the calv-ing ground this year was Shackleton(Catalog #2440). He was spotted off thecoast of Florida by the New EnglandAquarium aerial survey team in February.Shackleton, always easy to recognizebecause of the series of white prop scarson his back, was by himself and appearedto be traveling slowly. Slowly or not, we

Sponsored whale sightings April 2009-April 2010

area, the Navy plans to conduct 470annual exercises on the training rangewith up to three vessels and two aircraftdeploying exercise torpedoes, parachutesand sonobuoys, and sonar and other noisepollution.” The legal challenge contendsthat this training range will introducerisks of ship strikes, entanglements andnoise disturbance to this sensitive area, allimpacts that we have been working hardto mitigate in this calving habitat. Weapplaud these groups for filing this legalchallenge. Here at the New EnglandAquarium we have been very concernedthat the Navy has not taken the appropri-ate approach to assessing this area beforemaking plans to build the range; theseoffshore waters have not been well surveyed and therefore the use by rightwhales and other marine mammals is little understood. And in fact, on March20, 2010, during a survey of the area byour colleagues from the University ofNorth Carolina Wilmington and DukeUniversity, they witnessed a female rightwhale (Derecha, Catalog #2360) giving

Derecha and her calf 20 minutes after its birth 10 miles from the proposed U.S. Naval UnderseaWarfare Training Range. Photo: Marine Mammal Program at UNC Wilmington, Permit #948-1692

Navy is challengedContinued from page 7

birth within about 10 miles of the pro-posed range! This is only the second timea right whale birth has been witnessed(see Observations of a Right Whale Birth,RWRN Vol. 17 (1), May 2008). The factthat Derecha was far offshore indicatesthat right whales may be found theremore often then we know—aerial surveyshave rarely been conducted in that areadue to the distance from shore. The factthat we are still discovering previouslyunknown habitats of North Atlantic rightwhales, such as Jordan Basin in the middle of the Gulf of Maine (See RightWhales in Unusual Places, RWRN Vol. 18(1), May 2009) means there is a lot wedon’t know about their distribution. Couldthese offshore Florida waters be anotherimportant habitat? It’s impossible to knowwithout extensive surveys to explore thearea. On the same day, the survey teamalso sighted an adult male, Catalog#2303, far offshore and in the vicinity of the proposed USWTR site.

At this time, there has been no official response from the Navy to thelegal challenge put forward by these conservation groups. We will be sure togive you an update in the next newsletter.

As we mentioned in our last newsletter, Piper (Catalog #2320) was a mom for the second time last year, butshe was never sighted in the Bay of Fundyduring our field season. In 2006, whenshe had her first calf, we didn’t see her in the Bay either, although we believedthat a dead calf found in July was hers.Happily, as it turned out, that wasn’t thecase (See Piper’s calf…). It appears that,as with her first calf in 2006, Piper mayhave spent the summer somewhere otherthan the Bay of Fundy. We are alwaysconcerned when we don’t see a whale in a popular habitat, but our research has ledus to believe that some mothers must usea different summer nursery area. It is likely that Piper takes her calves to thesame nursery habitat that her mothertook her to many years ago. One that is, as yet, unknown to us.

We have no update on Starry Night(Catalog #1028) since his last sighting inthe Bay of Fundy in 2008, but that doesnot mean that this old bull won’t turn upin our data analysis. New photographs areconstantly being submitted to the Catalogand sometimes we don’t identify thewhales in those photos until months andsometimes years after they are submitted.We will keep you updated on our progressand alert you of any updates on our sponsored whales in future issues of Right Whale Research News.

Many thanks to all of you for sponsoring a North Atlantic right whale!Our success in the conservation and protection of such a critically endangeredspecies is largely due to your generouscontributions.

10 11

The recent publication of “DNA Profile ofa Sixteenth Century western North AtlanticRight Whale” by McLeod et al. in the journal Conservation Genetics has attractedconsiderable media attention. While someof the media reports accurately reportedon the results and implications of therecent research, there were others thatwere, unfortunately, both inaccurate andmisleading. To clarify the issues at hand,we review here the results and implica-tions of recent historical publications.How do recent findings change the storyof the North Atlantic right whale?

In our recent publication “Bowheadwhales, and not right whales, were the primary target of 16th- to 17th-centuryBasque whalers in the western NorthAtlantic” McLeod et al. visited 20 Basquewhaling stations along the coast ofQuebec and Labrador in search of historicright whale bones. Where found, boneswere collected and DNA was used toidentify the species of each bone.Surprisingly, the majority of bones werebowhead whales, with only a single NorthAtlantic right whale bone identified.This indicated that the bowhead whalewas the primary target of Basque whalingin the western North Atlantic in the 16th and 17th centuries.

How does this affect our understand-ing of right whale history? Well, insteadof the western North Atlantic right whalenumbering 12,000 to 15,000 individualsduring the 16th century as had been suggested previously (based on rightwhales comprising half of the Basquehunt), we suggested that, in the absenceof this hunting impact, the historical population size may have been smallerthan previously thought, and perhaps,Basque whaling in the western NorthAtlantic did not have a significant effecton the species. What do we mean by“smaller”? Well, we might never know thiswith any accuracy. The initial estimate of12,000 to 15,000 individuals was based onvery little data and excluded impacts fromsome regions and time periods. Yet it wasthe only existing estimate, and these values were commonly cited in scientificliterature—therefore we addressed howour data impacted this previous view ofright whale history. To date there has

been no subsequent comprehensive estimate of pre-exploitation populationsize in this species.

In “DNA profile of a sixteenth centurywestern North Atlantic right whale”,McLeod et al. present and analyse agenetic profile of a 16th-century westernNorth Atlantic right whale. Through thecomparison of this profile to the extantpopulation, it appears that genetic characteristics of the species have notchanged substantially over the past 400years. Instead, low levels of genetic diversity present in the population todaymay be a characteristic that pre-datescommercial whaling in the western NorthAtlantic. What does this mean? Well, wedon’t know for certain, but perhaps thespecies underwent some sort of historical“event” (i.e. glaciation periods, etc.) thatreduced levels of genetic variation.

Together, these articles highlight twothings: 1) The bowhead whale was theprimary target of Basque whaling in thewestern North Atlantic and this period of whaling had virtually no effect on historical right whale population size; and2) the population’s low levels of genetic

diversity pre-date 16th-century whalingactivities.

As we interpret these findings, it isimportant to point out two things:

1. The findings do not negate the following centuries of whaling thatcertainly reduced numbers of thisspecies, both in the western and eastern North Atlantic (for moreinformation see Reeves et al. 2007).

2. Although it is possible to estimateroughly how many whales were hunted during particular time periods,it is a very difficult venture to estimate the historical populationsize of the species. Determining the number of whales that existed historically from levels of geneticdiversity, or from the numbers ofwhales hunted over a particular timeperiod are methods that can be questionable in their assumptionsregarding a variety of populationdemographics and the limitations of historical resources.

Editor’s Note/Background: About a thousand years ago, in the Bay of Biscay off the coastof France and Spain, Basque fishermen began to hunt North Atlantic right whales. They were proficient hunters and, by targeting mothers and calves, they effectively decimated thepopulation in that area. In later centuries, the Basques, along with whalers from otherEuropean countries, hunted right whales throughout the eastern North Atlantic, eventuallyeradicating most of them. We know that the Basques set up very successful whaling stationsin Newfoundland and Labrador in the 1500s and, based on records and logbooks, it wasthought that they had taken between 25,000 and 40,000 bowhead and right whales.It was believed that the right whales made up about 50% of the catch, which would have contributed significantly to the near demise of the population.

In 2004 and 2005 the Aquarium’s Moe Brown and Brenna McLeod from TrentUniversity in Canada, along with other researchers, went to Red Bay and other knownBasque whaling sites in Labrador to collect DNA from the whale bones scattered along theshore. They planned to analyze the DNA to learn more about right whale population sizeand genetic variation when there were still large numbers of them. But in a twist worthyof an episode of television’s CSI, the majority of the bones turned out to be not from rightwhales at all, but from bowheads (a more northern species of whale, somewhat similar inappearance to right whales but larger and without callosities on their heads). In fact, onlyone right whale bone has ever been found among the original samples collected in the 1980sby Parks Canada. So how does this change our understanding of right whale population sizeand hunting history? The researchers recently published their findings but some inaccuratecoverage in the press has resulted in misunderstandings. Here Dr. McLeod summarizes thefindings of the research program and reiterates how this study affects our understanding ofBasque whaling in Labrador.

Lithograph depicting whaling in the Bay of Biscay (from the coat of arms of Lequeitio, a town inNorthern Spain).

To learn more about thissubject and the history of right whale hunting,please read: Gaskin, DE (1991) An update on the status of the right whale,Eubalaena glacialis, in Canada.Canadian Field Naturalist, 105:198-205.

Aguilar, A. (1986) A review of oldBasque whaling and its effect onright whales of the (Eubalaneaglaclalis) North Atlantic. Reports of the International WhalingCommission (Special Issue 10):191-199.

McLeod, BA, Brown, MW, Frasier,TR, and White, BN (2010) DNA profile of a sixteenth century western North Atlantic right whale(Eubalaena glacialis). ConservationGenetics, 11: 339-345.

McLeod, BA, Brown, MW, Moore,MJ, Stevens, W, Barkham, SH,Barkham, M, and White, BN (2008)Bowhead whales, and not rightwhales, were the primary target of16th – 17th-century Basquewhalers in the western NorthAtlantic. Arctic, 61: 61-75.

Reeves, RR, Smith, TD, andJosephson, EA (2007) Near-annihilation of a species: rightwhaling in the North Atlantic. In:The Urban Whale: North AtlanticRight Whales at the Crossroads(Kraus SD, Rolland RR, eds.). pp.39-74. Harvard University Press.

Review of the results and implications of recent historical DNA analysisBy Brenna McLeod

In light of recent historical data,some of the conditions that arechallenging recovery of the rightwhale (such as low levels of geneticvariation) have been present for farlonger than we have thought.

We encourage anyone interested in the research to read the originalwork in Conservation Genetics (2010) volume 11; pages 339–345 and in Arctic (2008) volume 61;pages 61–75.

Brenna McLeod (right) and Moira Brown examine 400-year-old bones recovered by divers from ParksCanada. The bones were found on the bottom of the harbor in Red Bay, Labrador, the best studied ofthe Basque whaling sites in Labrador. Photo: Yan Guilbault

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You would have needed to be a hibernat-ing groundhog to have missed the weather news this past winter—freezingtemperatures in Florida, torrential rainsacross the South, historic snowstorms inthe Mid-Atlantic, and sub-zero cold inthe upper Midwest. On the NorthAtlantic right whale calving ground offFlorida and Georgia, the aerial surveycrews were grounded more days thanusual by the stormy, windy conditions.At the same time, the numbers of rightwhale mother-calf pairs seen in the calving ground dropped off substantiallyfrom high numbers in the last few years,with only 19 identified this winter. Bycomparison, a record 39 calves were bornlast year. Frequently the weather newsblames the severe winter on El Niño, orsometimes on the North AtlanticOscillation (NAO). So the question is—can we blame the severe weather, El Niño,and/or the NAO for the apparent drop in calving? The short answer is: “Yes and no.”

Some research has shown weak correlations between the NAO cycle,oceanographic conditions, abundance of Gulf of Maine copepod, Calanusfinmarchicus, and the number of rightwhale calves born. Given that Calanus isthe primary prey of right whales, it iscompletely logical that its abundance isclosely linked to right whale reproduction.Calanus population abundance in the Gulfof Maine depends on repeated “re-stock-ing” by individuals that come in from theNova Scotian Shelf and from the conti-nental slope. Anything that affects Gulfof Maine oceanography, including NAOand El Niño variability, can affect Gulf ofMaine Calanus stocks, and therefore rightwhale feeding and calving success.

As described, there are two atmospheric conditions that may beinvolved. El Niño is an irregular periodicwarming in the eastern tropical PacificOcean. The phenomenon occurs mostintensely during the SouthernHemisphere summer/NorthernHemisphere winter, and is correlated witha seesaw in atmospheric pressure between

the eastern and western sides of the SouthPacific—the Southern Oscillation. TheSouthern Oscillation Index (SOI) is thedifference in sea-level barometric pressurebetween Tahiti and Australia. The annualaverage SOI is calculated as the mean ofthe monthly values from October of the previous year through September, withlows corresponding to El Niño years.

The NAO is the dominant mode ofinter-annual climate variability in theNorth Atlantic. There is a semi-perma-nent low-pressure system near Iceland and a similar high-pressure system nearthe Azores that tend to intensify or weaken synchronously. The NAO index is the standardized difference in pressurebetween the two systems. When theyintensify, the pressure difference increasesand the NAO is positive; when theyweaken, the difference decreases and theNAO is negative. The effects of NAOvariability are most apparent during thewinter, therefore standard practice is toaverage the monthly values fromDecember through March. The NAO has shown a tendency to remain forextended periods in primarily positive(e.g., early 1970s to 1995) or negative(1950s and 1960s) phases, but variabilityhas increased significantly since 1995.

The effects of positive versus negativeSOI or NAO on the North Atlantic andthe surrounding land masses tend to bevery similar. The conditions associatedwith positive index values include: warmwinter weather in Europe and centralNorth America; principal jet stream andwind pattern west to east; and cold tem-peratures in the northwestern Atlanticand Labrador Sea, enhancing sea-icefreezing and deep-water formation.Conditions in negative years include:cold winter weather in Europe and centralNorth America; major jet stream trackwith large meanders; increased storminessalong the U. S. East Coast; and warmtemperatures in the northwest Atlanticand Labrador Sea, inhibiting the formation of sea ice and deep water and enhancing the southward transport of cooler, fresher, surface water in the

Labrador Current.In the winter of 2010, both the winter

NAO and SOI were sharply negative,which has only occurred once before since1975—in 1987. Note that both values arepreliminary for 2010, since the winterNAO includes only December andJanuary in the average and the annualSOI only includes October throughJanuary. It is clear, however, that thesevere winter weather we’ve been experi-encing this year can be blamed on the“double whammy” of simultaneous lowvalues in both cycles. What is less clear isthe connection to this winter’s compara-tively low calf numbers—for two reasons.One has to do with historical calving.Whether or not a particular female givesbirth depends both on her feeding successand on her recent reproductive history,since nearly all females require aminimum of three years between calves.For this calving season, 54 females ofreproductive age were potentially availableto calve (38 females who have previouslycalved and 16 who have never previouslycalved) yet only 19 calves were born.Researchers from Cornell University constructed a model that predicted thenumber of calves by looking at Calanusabundance and the reproductive historiesof females. It will be interesting to see ifCalanus abundance has influenced thisyear’s calf count.

The second reason has to do withtime lags in the effects of NAO and SOIon right whale reproduction. Althoughthe inter-relationships are weak, variableand probably non-linear, analyses to datesuggest lags of one to two years betweenthe atmospheric cycles and right whalecalving. There was a decrease in NAOfrom a relatively high value in 2008 to anegative value in 2009, therefore it mightbe linked to the decrease in calving thiswinter. However, given the preliminarydata suggesting simultaneous lows in bothNAO and SOI in 2010, we might expectlower-than-average calving in 2011and/or 2012. Since the number of calvesborn this year—19—is already below therecent average, will we see even fewer nextyear as a result of the low NAO/SOI?

Editor’s Note: A more detailed version of this article (including references) first appeared in Right Whale News, Volume 18 Number 1, which can be found at www.rightwhaleweb.org.

Right Whale Calving and the Winter of 2010 Contributed by Robert D. Kenney, University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanograpy

Plush right whale*There are many stuffed animals on themarket, but this is the only one that lookslike a right whale! This little whale is cute,soft, and accurate too, with callosities,paddle-shaped flippers and even baleen.15 inches long. $20. Also available at theAquarium Gift Shop and throughAmazon (www.amazon.com).

15

Gift IdeasAre you looking for a special gift for someone? Here are a few fun and interestingsuggestions from our right whale collection. Plus with every purchase you’ll behelping to support right whale research! To order you may use the handy orderform or call 617-973-6582.

Whales You Can SponsorWho’s Who?

Snowball (an adult male)

Calvin (female born in 1992) Shackleton (male born in 1994)

Phoenix (female born in 1987)

Calvin was orphaned at the very early age of 8 months. She wenton to survive an entanglement and, on December 30, 2004, shewas sighted with her first calf. She was named (before her sexwas known) for the spunky little character in the Calvin andHobbes comic strip because she exhibited similar traits to theyoungster: cleverness, perseverance and adaptability.

Named after the intrepid Antarctic explorer, Shackleton the whalecaused quite a commotion when he ventured up the DelawareRiver to Camden, NJ. During this adventure he was struck by atug boat, but he survived his ordeal and is now seen regularly.

Phoenix is a mother and grandmother. In 1997 she was entangledin fishing gear but managed to escape. She was named for themythical bird that burned but rose from the ashes. Phoenix has survived a serious entanglement and “returned” from almost certain doom with only a distinctive lip scar to show for her two-year ordeal. A life-size model of her now hangs at theSmithsonian Institution in Washington DC.

Snowball got his name from a unique scar above his left lip thatresembles a big white snowball. We do not know what causedthis scar, but it does make him easy to identify, even from a distance. Snowball has been seen in habitats where only a fewright whales are documented yearly, such as Jeffreys Ledge offthe coast of New Hampshire and in the waters off Long Island.

Piper was first seen in 1993 and at the time was already at least2 years old. She was named for a scar on her flank that looks likea small airplane, such as the Piper Cub. She had been entangledtwice in a 12-year period, but was seen in April 2005 free of gear.She was sighted with her first calf in January 2006.

The many white scars and dots on this whale’s black bodyreminded researchers of the night sky, so they named himStarry Night. He is frequently seen in courtship groups and, with the development of new genetic techniques, we may soon know which calves he has fathered.

Starry Night (an adult male)Piper (an adult female)

Books Disappearing Giants*by Scott Kraus and Ken Mallory

This is a small format, hardcoverbook filled withinteresting facts and lots of color photos.48 pages. $10.

*To order the plush right whale, T-shirt orDisappearing Giants, use the handy order form on this page or call 617-973-6582.

The Urban Whale:North Atlantic Right Whales at theCrossroads Edited byScott D. Kraus andRosalind M. Rolland

First published in2007, The UrbanWhale has just beenreleased in paperback!

T-shirt*100% cotton with great right whale logos.In S, M, L, XL. $20.

It covers nearly everything we knowabout North Atlantic right whales in a clear and accessible style andincludes many photos and illustrations. Major contributions to The Urban Whale came from theright whale research staff at the NewEngland Aquarium. Each chapterstarts with a personal story about awhale, a researcher or an encounterbetween them. It is the belief of theeditors that right whales have manylessons to teach us, both about theirlives and about their home in theoceans. 576 pages. $19.95 (paperback)This book is available through Amazon(www.amazon.com) or by ordering directlyfrom the publisher: www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/KRAURB.html

Right Whale SponsorshipShare the compelling story of a right whale with a friend! By learning about the life of an individualright whale, a sponsor will gain amore in-depth understanding of thestruggles and successes these endan-gered whales experience. Sponsors will receive a Sponsorship Certificatewith a picture of their chosen whale,the book Disappearing Giants, writtenby Scott Kraus and Ken Mallory ofthe New England Aquarium, and acolorful and informative four-pagepamphlet that includes the life story,composite drawing and map of sightings of the specific sponsoredwhale. It also includes links to ourwebsite and others that allow you tokeep track of right whales at all times.For more information see the Sponsorship order form in this newsletter or visit the following link: http://www.neaq.org/rwsponsor.

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Plush Right Whale(s) $20 ea. =$

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