IMAGES: The image at right shows a female North Atlantic right whale giving birth. The bottom right image shows the mother lifting her calf out of the ocean to help it get its first breath.

Photographs showing a critically endangered North Atlantic right whale giving birth to her calf have been released. New England Aquarium researcher Monica Zani took the first ever photographs.

The North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) remains threatened from ship strikes and commercial fishing gear. Documents have recently revealed that the White House was instrumental in delaying the protection of the critically endangered whales. According to the Boston Globe “efforts to protect the endangered right whale from being killed by commercial ships have languished for more than a year in part because of White House objections [and] documents show Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and White House economists have questioned the conclusions of marine scientists.” Too bad the Bush Administration nor their economists understand that natural resources must be conserved in order to maintain a sustainable world economy. Where is the conservative in conservatism? Liberals have grasped what it means to be conservative when protecting the environment better than the Bush Administration and many other conservatives have.

In more marine mammals news, scientists in New Zealand had the opportunity to necropsy a pygmy right whale after it was found dead and stranded “at Spirit’s Bay in the country’s far north.” The opportunity to conduct a necropsy of the specimen drew excitement amongst the marine mammal community since this is only the second specimen to be examined and little is known of this species so data is badly needed.

Pygmy right whales are the smallest of the baleen whales and are considered oddities. For example, asymmetry is rare in nature but this species exhibits asymmetry. According to Joy Reidenberg, of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York “the larynx has a sac on it, like all baleen whales, but the sac is off to one side, and that raises a couple of very interesting functional and evolutionary questions, such as how they generate sounds.” The pygmy right whale has little in common with larger species of right whales but may be more closely related to other whales.

Image Found Here