Earth & Sky

Remember

The North Pacific right whale has struggled back from near extinction twice recently. But the species is still in trouble.

Paul Wade: We think that there are only maybe 30 to 50 left in the eastern North Pacific

That’s Paul Wade of Alaska Fisheries Science Center. Right whales came under international protection in the 1930s. After World War II, people reported seeing them again. But, after 1967, sightings of right whales in the North Pacific dropped almost to zero.

Paul Wade: It became an extraordinarily rare thing to see a right whale. It became the kind of thing where a scientist could publish a paper based a single sighting of a right whale.

Wade said scientists found out what happened 10 years ago, from secret records kept by a Russian whale biologist.

Paul Wade: The Soviet Union was just trying to maximize profits. And the most devastating bit of that is they took 372 right whales over a four-year period, from 1963-1967.

But there’s hope. In 1996, researchers accidentally discovered a group of five right whales in the Bering Sea.

Scientists began doing yearly surveys by boat and airplane. In September 2006, they found 17 whales, the largest concentration of right whales seen in 50 years. Best of all, there were seven females, three of them accompanied by calves.

Our thanks today to NOAA – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.