(Image Credit: NOAA/Misty Niemeyer)

It seems that one of Nature’s marine mysteries has been solved. The calving grounds of the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) are known—females migrate south to these “calving ground[s] off Florida and Georgia.” However, the wintering location of the remaining population of North Atlantic right whales was not known, but the recent discovery of large groups of right whales in the Gulf of Maine may provide the answer. It is imperative that the distribution of these critically endangered baleen whales is completely understood in order to carry out conservation objectives. From the Cape Cod Times, MA:

Federal surveyors may have uncovered where many of the endangered North Atlantic right whales congregate in the winter, given an uncommon flurry of activity in December in the Gulf of Maine.

While scientists know that about 100 female right whales migrate south along the Atlantic Coast in the winter to give birth to their calves, the wintertime location of the rest of the 325 right whales has proved a mystery.

The mystery has prevailed — perhaps until now — because bad weather in northeast waters makes seeing the right whales difficult. Also, right whales feed well below the water’s surface in the winter. And the federal aerial surveys that produced the discovery, using a grid system from Canada to Long Island, only began about five years ago.

In early December, surveyors counted 44 right whales in one day about 70 miles south of Bar Harbor, Maine, in an area known as Jordan Basin. On a day in mid-December, they counted 41 whales just west of Jordan Basin.

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The presence of so many whales together in the winter — males and females — is unexpected and may indicate that a breeding ground exists, Dawicki said. Several years of data analysis remain to determine whether a right whale calf born in southeast waters was conceived at Jordan Basin or Cashes Ledge, said Amy Knowlton of the New England Aquarium in Boston.

The survey data can also help scientists and federal officials write rules to protect right whales, like a reduction in ship speeds when the mammals are nearby, said Peter Tyack, senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

(Image Credit: NOAA/Allison Glass)

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