North Atlantic right whales may face extinction after no new births recorded

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

North Atlantic right whales may face extinction after no new births recorded

Declining fertility and rising mortality, exacerbated by fishing industry, prompts experts to warn whales could be extinct by 2040

Joanna Walters
Mon 26 Feb 2018 21.04 GMT

The dwindling North Atlantic right whale population is on track to finish its breeding season without any new births, prompting experts to warn again that without human intervention, the species will face extinction.

Scientists observing the whale community off the US east coast have not recorded a single mother-calf pair this winter. Last year saw a record number of deaths in the population. Threats to the whales include entanglement in lobster fishing ropes and an increasing struggle to find food in abnormally warm waters.

The combination of rising mortality and declining fertility is now seen as potentially catastrophic. There are estimated to be as few as 430 North Atlantic right whales left in the world, including just 100 potential mothers.

“At the rate we are killing them off, this 100 females will be gone in 20 years,” said Mark Baumgartner, a marine ecologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Without action, he warned, North Atlantic right whales will be functionally extinct by 2040.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/26/north-atlantic-right-whale-extinction-no-births-fishing

[shenmue]

1. I has a Big Sad. How can we continue to let this happen?

[applegrove]

2. Last summer some were further north in the Gulf of the St Lawrence.

Last edited Mon Feb 26, 2018, 11:20 PM - Edit history (1)

But that water is warmer than the Bay of Fundie. They got hit by ships. Someone needs to get the whalefood to go off of Newfoundland where the water is cold again, there are fewer ships and the whales will follow the food and be safe. IMHO

[democratisphere]

3. Humans and human activity are wiping out everything!

This WH doesn't give a damn about the extinction of animals or humans.