A whale baby boom off the United States’ Atlantic coast has prompted hopes that one of the world’s most critically endangered heavyweights may be staging a comeback.

At least 32 right whale calves have been spotted in the waters off Georgia and Florida during the current breeding season, which runs from December to March, according to CNN.com.

The number represents a remarkable success and a vital lifeline for a species which has come perilously close to extinction. Less than 400 of the giant mammals are estimated to exist.

“Four hundred animals is not a vibrant, thriving population — it’s one that’s very close to the edge,” research scientist Amy Knowlton of the New England Aquarium told CNN.com.

“And so I think we need to keep monitoring what’s happening from year to year, understand how they die, and really stay focused on the fact that this is a population that’s not out of the woods by any means.”

Right whales have little to thank humans for. Their name derives from whale-hunting days, when whalers from Nantucket and Long Island considered them the “right whales” to catch because they tended to swim close to the coast and would usually float when killed, enabling whaling boats to tow them back to shore.

While the whales have been spared from hunting since the 1930s, nowadays the main threat to the population still comes from the region’s shipping. Even by the standards of their own species, right whales are big, growing up to 18 metres in length and weighing in at 100 tons. The black-skinned creatures are also extremely difficult to spot in the water since they have no dorsal fins.

With fishing boats, cruise ships, naval warships and submarines among just some of the traffic in the busy Atlantic waters, right whales are extremely vulnerable to vessel strikes and prone to fatal entanglements with fishing nets.

Now however, it appears to be human initiatives that are helping the whales to recover. So far this season, there hasn’t been a single whale fatality reported as a result of shipping collisions. That is partly due to new speed rules, introduced last year, slowing shipping to 10 knots in whale conservation areas.

But a massive whale spotting programme, involving small planes, boats and an army of volunteers scouring the seas daily through binoculars from beaches and balconies, has also made a significant contribution. Once spotted, “whale alerts” are sent out to local shipping via email.

The data also helps researchers to monitor the whales and update the hugely impressive North Atlantic Right Whale Catalog – which details the whereabouts and life histories of 541 right whales and includes more than 200,000 photos dating back to 1935. Whales which haven’t been seen for years can be easily identified by their callosities, the distinctive pattens of rough skin on their heads.

Researchers maintain that the right whale population still has a long way to go before it comes off the critically endangered list – with climate change and warmer seas posing a new and urgent threat to the gentle giants’ survival.

But the arrival of a new generation of calves has made whale watchers cautiously optimistic that the centuries-old decline in the species’ population may finally at least have been halted.

Click here to learn more about right whales and how you can get involved in whale spotting efforts. Or click here for information on the New England Aquarium’s right whale sponsorship scheme.

Also check out National Geographic’s stunning photo gallery of the creatures and accompanying feature.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 at 5:40 pm and is filed under Cetaceans, Conservation, Mammals, Ocean, Whales, Wild. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.