North Atlantic Right Whale

The North Atlantic right whale is a baleen whale, one of three right whale species in the genus Eubalaena that were formerly classified as a single species. Because of their docile nature, slow surface-skimming feeding behavior, tendency to stay close to the coast and high blubber content, right whales were once a preferred target for whalers, and today they are among the most endangered whales in the world, protected under the US Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act and Canada's Species at Risk Act. An estimated 356 individuals remain in the western North Atlantic, migrating between feeding grounds in the Labrador Sea and winter calving areas off Georgia and Florida through waters with heavy shipping traffic, while the eastern North Atlantic population, in the low teens at most, may already be functionally extinct; vessel strikes and entanglement in fixed fishing gear together account for nearly half of all North Atlantic right whale mortality since 1970.