page_title: North Pacific right whale
section_title: Eastern North Pacific
hierarchical_section_title: North Pacific right whale / Historic and current distribution / Wintering/calving grounds / Eastern North Pacific
caption_attribution_description: English: May 2017 - Anacapa Island, Channel Islands, California - east of the lighthouse (N34'00.675", W119' 19.869" a single whale was seen by Shelly Johnson on the sailboat Zoarces. http://www.sfcelticmusic.com/js/RTWHALES/WestCoast_sightings.htm A right whale was spotted back in May near the Channel Islands just a month after another right whale was spotted in April near La Jolla Shores, and these whales are usually not spotted in Southern California. Seeing News 8's report from La Jolla in April, Pam Hoffman from Camarillo shared the new encounter by her husband Mark and friends on the sailboat Zoarces. Biologist Yasutaka Imai confirmed that the whale off Malibu is different from the La Jolla whale. They say the sighting is amazing as there are only about 30 right whales left in the eastern North Pacific and they're usually found near Alaska. "That's a new whale," said Dr. Phil Clapham of NOAA Marine Mammal Laboratory about the whale spotted in May. "The pictures were excellent and we ran them through our catalogue a few days ago and it's not a whale we know." Seeing one right whale in Southern California is very rare so seeing two this year has been a surprise. "To see two of these animals in a short period of time - especially in an area that is not known as their primary habitat - is very fortunate," said NOAA Research Wildlife Biologist Jeff Moore. Whale biologist Phil Clapham says they're not coming here for food, because our waters don't really have a lot of what they eat. "They feed on these tiny little animals called copepod - which are actually the size of a grain of rice," said Clapham. "And somehow they manage to get - in the case of a really big right whale - perhaps 3 or 4 tons of these a day." It's not clear where north pacific right whales go for the winter, so this could be part of their migration. Unfortunately, male right whales greatly outnumber females, so the population, if it is growing, isn't happening fast. It's not known if the whale spotted off Malibu is male or female, but it's estimated to be less than 10 years old. http://www.cbs8.com/story/36621032/rare-right-whale-sightings-in-southern-california
context_page_description: The North Pacific right whale is a very large, thickset baleen whale species that is extremely rare and endangered.
  The Northeast Pacific population, which summers in the southeastern Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, may have no more than 40 animals. A western population that summers near the Commander Islands, the coast of Kamchatka, along the Kuril Islands and in the Sea of Okhotsk is thought to number in the low hundreds. Before commercial whaling in the North Pacific there were probably over 20,000 right whales in the region. The taking of right whales in commercial whaling has been prohibited by one or more international treaties since 1935. Nevertheless, between 1962 and 1968, illegal Soviet whaling killed at least 529 right whales in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska as well as at least 132 right whales in the Sea Okhotsk. plus an additional 104 North Pacific right whales from unspecified areas.
  The International Union for Conservation of Nature categorizes the species as "Endangered", and categorizes the Northeast Pacific population as "Critically Endangered". The Center for Biological Diversity argues that the North Pacific right whale is the most endangered whale on Earth.
context_section_description: Off the west coast of the United States, Point Conception is a turning location in terms of sighting records in the 19th and 20th centuries, and this may contribute to support the once-abandoned idea; existence of historical breeding grounds in coastal waters including along North American continent.
  Until recently, most researchers thought that right whales in the eastern North Pacific wintered off the west coast of North America, particularly along the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California. There have been few winter sightings in all these areas, particularly in California. A more detailed study argues that these single individuals were merely stragglers. Notwithstanding 7 days/week whale-watching operations in several parts of this range, there have been only 17 sightings between Baja and Washington state. The absence of calves from historic California stranding data suggests that this area was never an important calving or wintering ground. When a right whale was observed along the coast of La Jolla in 2017, the animal was initially misidentified as a grey whale.
caption: A right whale off Anacapa Island in May 2017.
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