The Right Whale as a Family of Species is doing well given the events of the last two centuries, but that's due to the healthy recovery of just one of it's five species, the Eubalena Australis, or Southern Right whale. The other three or four species, are well, sadly, in the toilet, although there is hope on at least one side of each remaining ocean that they inhabit, the Atlantic and Pacific. As they have found with Great White Sharks recently, which a are single species that have multiple migration areas that can lead to what might be a sub species with the shark, but with the right whales are considered a separate species, due to a differentiation that has occurred with the evolutions of the groups in the different migration areas over time. With the whites, they found that in fact, the ones off the coast of California have different patterns and habits than the ones off South Africa, which are likely the two best studied groups. They breed in different places, have different feeding grounds, and migrations and migrations times, it's not just one massive roaming population. Why I am discussing Great Whites in a post about Right Whales will become more obvious in a later post, but for now I hope the example makes sense. The five populations of Right Whales don't all have to survive for the family to survive, but it would be pretty hard to haul 200 Right Whales up from Antarctica and expect them to learn now to live off the coast of Alaska or Nova Scotia. They are actually different species, and the ideal is for each species to survive.
They were the 'Right Whales' to hunt, for they had ample supplies of Whale Oil to light the lamps of the world stored in their bulbous heads and blubber before Thomas Edison took mercy on them and started harnessing electricity. Before offshore whaling got big at the beginning of the 1800's, there were multiple independent migrations around the world, there were many around the arctic, and then there was from what I can tell an eastern and western Pacific migration, and an eastern and western Atlantic migration. They have been seen in the Mediterranian as well. So 5 distinct populations and i guess species all told, if not more. Since this blog is supposed to be an upper and not a downer, I will focus on the fact that three of the populations still exist, and one is doing quite fine, down in the southern oceans. I once sat in of all places a bathtub on the South Coast of South Africa and watched them breach and play for hours on end. The Western Pacific is hanging on well enough to be survive but have a future very much in doubt, population perhaps 200,mostly in the Sea of Okhost but not heavily researched, but the Western Atlantic population, which likes to Jet Set between the Georgia-Florida Coastal Areas for breeding, then back North again to the seas from New York north to it appears to Nova Scotia for summer feeding, mostly from Cape Cod North, has a population just hanging on, but the good news is that it is slowly but surely increasing...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_whale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_right_whale
Reading these entries you can see that it is a tough slow increase.They estimate that they birth about 20 per summer, and about half the moralities are due to Human Factors.. fishing nets, ship strikes, noise from sonar, and global warming and overfishing likely have had an impact, like in the summer of 2010. But if you notice, as of this summer, the population, like a man climbing back over the edge of a cliff, is slowly rising. They claim that in August of 2012 there were 396 individuals, up from 361 in 2005.. so that's not a huge appreciation, 35 individuals, about a 10% increase over 7 years, In 1935 I just read, there were only 100 thought to exist, so progress indeed, and progress in a place not many people associate with wilderness, the North Atlantic, which is more famous for World War Two battles and Shipwrecked Cruise Liners than for it's biodiversity, which is hanging by a thread due to honestly almost exclusively the pressures of being surrounded by some of the worlds largest population densities, who have the cash and the know how to fish offshore, and have for now hundreds of years.. but it's improvement, and I'm no geneticist, but I would argue that it's also likely enough to preserve the species.
NOAA and the USFWS have stepped in to do all it can on behalf of the American Government. Shipping lanes have been established to protect the whales, especially around Boston Harbor,and there is even an IPad app you can download to see where collisions might occur due to a warning system they have created.
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/mammals/cetaceans/rightwhale_northatlantic.htm
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/sars/species.htm#largewhales
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/sars/ao2012whnr-w.pdf
http://www.fws.gov/endangered/news/bulletin-summer2009/reducing-threats-to-right-whales.html
That whale on the Bulbous Bow in the photo from the above link appears to be a fin whale that was brought into Baltimore Harbor on a container ship.. they are less endangered, so don't worry too much:
http://www.dnr.state.md.us/fisheries/fishingreport/fishingrptArchive/frarchives2006/0510index.asp
http://www.learner.org/jnorth/search/RightWhale_notes1.html
There does not seem to be an independent advocacy group for the right whale, just the government and the general groups like the World Wildlife Fund, wait, I take that back, the New England Aquarium seems to take a lead in research up north, and down south there are some advocacy groups as well.
http://www.neaq.org/conservation_and_research/projects/endangered_species_habitats/right_whale_research/index.php
They keep a blog and seem to be constantly doing something:
http://rightwhales.neaq.org/?m=1
So for now, what can be done is to let NOAA do it's work, try to keep the boats and the nets from killing them, hold your breath, let em get it on, and watch the population grow... slowly...
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/03/16/right-whales-make-comeback-after-centuries-decline/Cf8IdJe8ydpeLYLXr3ibTL/story.html
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