We are dealing with a species that may become extinct if things don't change. Chris Slay, New England Aquarium New regulations require ship captains traveling along the East Coast to transmit their positions when they are in waters populated with endangered right whales. A collaborative research tagging program is helping scientists develop a model that will assist mariners in avoiding these threatened animals. Despite international protection since 1937, only about 300 North Atlantic right whales remain, and the species is showing no signs of recovery.
Ship collisions kill more right whales than do any other documented cause of mortality.
We are dealing with a species that may become extinct if things don't change. Fisheries Service and Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary launched a scientific cruise off the coasts of Georgia and northern Florida, where calving right whales usually winter. A second cruise is planned for January 2000. The information we're gathering is helping us build a model that can be used to predict where right whales are likely to be, which will enable us to warn mariners so they can avoid them. Regulations that went into effect this summer require that large ships entering waters off Cape Cod and the Florida-Georgia state line must transmit their position, and a Virginia computer center will then transmit to the ships the latest information on right whale sightings.