Fighting to stave off extinction

     The Discovery news channel and Net For Change recently reported that the first new born baby Northern Right Whale of the season was spotted off the Georgia coastline. The whales were hunted to the edge of extinction until the 1950s, and the population has never fully recovered, coming close to the edge of extinction, with only an estimated 300 of the whales remaining in existence. After seeing only one new born whale last year, compared to seven or eight sitings in a typical season, a sighting this early in the winter whale breeding season gave hope to whale researchers that the whales might have a better year and that the species might yet recover from the threat of extinction.

     The Northern right whales are considered to be one of the world's most critically endangered species. Each winter the females migrate to the shores off the southern United States coastline to give birth to their calves, and for this reason their calving grounds off the coastline of Georgia and Florida has been declared a critical habitat by the National Marine Fisheries Service. Since the whales are slow and bouyant, and their breeding grounds are in the middle of shipping lane, the main current threat to their survival is an encounter with a ships propellers. It is a violation of state and federal law for a ship to get any closer than 500 yards to one of the animals, but accidents still happen. It is not unheard of for the dead bodies of calves to wash ashore during the breeding season. Using technology borrowed from the United States Navy, efforts are being made to track the location of the whales, for example by using sensitive microphones to locate their distinctive songs, and use the information to warn ships in the area. You can follow this link to watch a brief video (in Quick Time format) on the right whale (1 megabyte) or follow this link to watch a longer presentation on efforts to equip ships with infrared sensors capable of detecting the whales, even at night, thus avoiding collisions. If you have a fast enough net connection, you can watch infrared tracking pictures of the right whale - Quick time format (4 megabytes).