Around half of all the world’s North Atlantic right whales are currently swimming in Massachusetts waters.
Survey experts with the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) in Provincetown say they’ve been thrilled to identify more 162 individual right whales in recent weeks — that’s out of a total of about 370.
The critically endangered whales are taking advantage of widespread plankton patches to feed on in Cape Cod Bay. They’re also spending time in the Cape Cod Canal, up into waters just off Boston.
Amy James, aerial survey coordinator for CCS, said this “banner feeding year” has drawn four of the 10 newborn right whales to local waters. They've each been seen with their mothers: Black Heart, Checkmark, Caterpillar, and Grand Teton.
“We're really happy to see that those animals have made that long swim from the Southeast US up into the northern waters. So that's one big milestone checked off the list for them and we’re hoping that we see the other six come up soon,” she said.
James added that her team is also keeping an eye out for whales that are entangled in rope or fishing gear, or impacted by boat collisions. Those are the two leading causes of death for North Atlantic right whales.
“We have our response team, their boat is launched in the water and ready to respond,” she said. “We expect that we will be working a lot of entanglements in the future weeks.”
The next three weeks, specifically, James said, “we are not getting a ton of sleep."
While the disentanglement team prepares for the worst, the aerial survey team will be hard at work identifying whales and collaborating on research projects.
Specifically, James pointed to efforts to use artificial intelligence to discover large whale aggregations.
By mid-May, most of the right whales should migrate into northern waters.
James urged mariners to go slow, and keep a safe distance.
“Hopefully these animals get what they need while they're here and then they leave relatively soon,” she said, “so that it's limiting the human and whale interaction component that will happen as more vessels and aircraft are out in the same vicinity as them.”
