Animal Diversity Web

Ge­o­graphic Range

North­ern right whales were once found through­out the North­ern Hemi­sphere. These whales in­habit the tem­per­ate and sub­po­lar wa­ters of the north At­lantic and north Pa­cific oceans. In the North Pa­cific they are found from about 25 to 60 de­grees north and in the North At­lantic from about 30 to 75 de­grees north. North­west At­lantic pop­u­la­tions occur from Ice­land to the Gulf of Mex­ico, with largest con­cen­tra­tions oc­cur­ring be­tween Nova Sco­tia, Canada, and Florida. Win­ter calv­ing grounds occur off the coasts of Florida and Geor­gia.

Right whales move from sub­po­lar re­gions with the onset of win­ter to lower lat­i­tudes, stay­ing near land masses. Some good areas to see them are from Cape Cod north to the Bay of Fundy, Nova Sco­tia and Grand Manan Is­land, New Brunswick.

North­ern Pa­cific pop­u­la­tions are iso­lated from North­ern At­lantic pop­u­la­tions and are ge­net­i­cally dis­tinct. These pop­u­la­tions are some­times re­ferred to as Eu­bal­aena japon­ica, North­ern Pa­cific right whales, and occur from the south­east­ern Bering Sea to the Okhotsk Sea off west­ern Rus­sia. North­ern Pa­cific pop­u­la­tions may be more closely re­lated to south­ern right whales, Eu­bal­aena aus­tralis, than to North­ern At­lantic pop­u­la­tions of north­ern right whales (North­ern At­lantic right whales). (Rosen­baum, et al., 2000)

• Biogeographic Regions
• arctic ocean
  • native
• atlantic ocean
  • native
• pacific ocean
  • native

Habi­tat

De­pend­ing on the time of year and which hemi­sphere they're found, right whales will spend much of their time near bays and penin­su­las and in shal­low, coastal wa­ters. This can pro­vide shel­ter, food abun­dance, and se­cu­rity for fe­males rear­ing young or avoid­ing the mat­ing ef­forts of males. Four crit­i­cal habi­tats for north­ern right whales are the Browns-Bac­caro Bank, Bay of Fundy, Great South Chan­nel, and the Cape Cod Bay. Each of these is dis­tin­guished by high den­si­ties of cope­pod pop­u­la­tions. The first three have deep basins (150 m) flanked by rel­a­tively shal­low water. Cope­pods are con­cen­trated here be­cause of con­ver­gences and up­wellings dri­ven by tidal cur­rents. This also oc­curs in the Cape Cod Bay even though a deep basin isn't pre­sent.

(Cum­mings 1985, Ka­tona 1999)

• Habitat Regions
• temperate
• polar
• saltwater or marine

• Aquatic Biomes
• coastal

Phys­i­cal De­scrip­tion

Eu­bal­aena glacialis is typ­i­cally uni­formly dark in color ex­cept for scars, belly patches, par­a­sites and head ex­cres­cences or cal­losi­ties, most of which are light. Cal­losi­ties are promi­nent on the ros­trum, near blow­holes, near eyes, and on the chin and lower lip. These large crusty growths often har­bor crus­taceans called whale lice, and may there­fore ap­pear white, or­ange, yel­low, or pink. Hair can be found on the tips of the chin and upper jaw and is also as­so­ci­ated with the cal­losi­ties. Right whales have no dor­sal fin, nor do they have the grooved throat. The flip­pers are very broad and short.

Com­pared to other mys­ticetes, right whales are very large in girth rel­a­tive to their length giv­ing them a ro­tund ap­pear­ance. The jaws are greatly arched in order to fit the ex­cep­tion­ally long baleen. Baleen can reach a max­i­mum length of 5 m with an av­er­age of 300 plates on ei­ther side. The head is enor­mous, close to one-third the body length. There is sex­ual di­mor­phism; fe­males are larger than males. Young are 4.5 to 6m long at birth. Adults can be up to 17m long and weigh up to 100 tons.

The blow­holes are well par­ti­tioned on the ex­te­rior sur­face, re­sult­ing in a ver­ti­cal V-shaped blow that may be up to 5m high. The largest amount of blub­ber found in whales is that of right whales. The av­er­age thick­ness is 20 inches and can be as thick as 28 inches. It com­prises 36-45% of the total body weight. All seven cer­vi­cal ver­te­brae are fused into one os­seous unit. They are ex­tremely slow swim­mers, swim­ming at an av­er­age of 2 knots and rarely ex­ceed­ing 5 knots.

(Cum­mings 1985, Sli­jper 1979).

• Other Physical Features
• endothermic
• homoiothermic
• bilateral symmetry

• Sexual Dimorphism
• female larger

• Range mass

  55000 to 95000 kg

  121145.37 to 209251.10 lb

• Range length

  17 (high) m

  55.77 (high) ft

Re­pro­duc­tion

Eu­bal­aena glacialis cop­u­lates from De­cem­ber to March, when most of the young are born. After much nuz­zling and ca­ress­ing, mat­ing right whales roll about ran­domly ex­pos­ing flip­pers, flukes, backs, bel­lies, and por­tions of their heads. It has been noted that the male would some­times begin pre­cop­u­la­tory be­hav­ior by plac­ing his chin on the ex­posed hindquar­ters of the fe­male. It is be­lieved that most right whales are polyg­a­mous and no per­ma­nent pair bonds are formed. Fe­males prob­a­bly mate with mul­ti­ple males. No ag­gres­sion has been ob­served be­tween com­pet­ing males, which is a rare be­hav­ior in mam­mals. Court­ing bouts may last for an hour or two, after which par­tic­i­pants go their own way. Both males and fe­males are seen on their back at the water's sur­face but fe­males may show this pos­ture to move her gen­i­talia away from a pur­su­ing male. Males tend to have the largest testes of an liv­ing mam­mal (weigh­ing up to about 525 kg.), sug­gest­ing that sperm com­pe­ti­tion may play a sig­nif­i­cant role in de­ter­min­ing mat­ing suc­cess.

• Mating System
• polygynandrous (promiscuous)

North­ern right whales mate in the win­ter and give birth in the spring to a sin­gle young. Fe­males give birth to up to one calf every three to four years. Young are typ­i­cally born in win­ter.

Males are sex­u­ally ma­ture at a length of 15 m and fe­males at 15.5 m, these sizes may be reached be­tween 5 and 10 years of age.

• Key Reproductive Features
• iteroparous
• seasonal breeding
• gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate)
• sexual
• fertilization
  • internal
• viviparous

• Breeding interval

  Females give birth to a single calf every 3 to 4 years.

• Breeding season

  Mating and births occur in the winter.

• Average number of offspring

  1

• Average number of offspring

  1

  AnAge

• Average gestation period

  12 months

• Average gestation period

  350 days

  AnAge

• Range age at sexual or reproductive maturity (female)

  5 to 10 years

• Range age at sexual or reproductive maturity (male)

  5 to 10 years

Right whales are 4.5 to 6 me­ters in length when they are born. They grow rapidly there­after, at­tain­ing a size of 12 me­ters by 18 months old. The length of lac­ta­tion and de­pen­dence are not well known.

• Parental Investment
• precocial
• pre-fertilization
  • provisioning
  • protecting
    • female
• pre-hatching/birth
  • provisioning
    • female
  • protecting
    • female
• pre-weaning/fledging
  • provisioning
    • female
  • protecting
    • female

Lifes­pan/Longevity

Data on mean longevity are not yet avail­able. An in­di­ca­tion that po­ten­tial longevity can be very long was ob­tained by serendip­ity. A pic­ture was taken of a fe­male and her calf in 1935 in Florida. The an­i­mal was seen in 1959 off Cape Cod and ir­reg­u­larly until the sum­mer of 1995. As­sum­ing it was her first calf in the orig­i­nal pic­ture and she was at the age of sex­ual ma­tu­rity or eight years old, she would have been 67 years old when last seen.

Their close rel­a­tives, bow­head whales, have been recorded with lifes­pans ap­proach­ing 200 years, so it's likely that right whales have very long lifes­pans.

(Ka­tona 1999)

• Range lifespan
  Status: wild

  67 (high) years

• Average lifespan
  Status: captivity

  67 years

  AnAge

Be­hav­ior

North­ern right whales are mi­gra­tory an­i­mals, spend­ing the win­ter in warmer wa­ters such as those found off Cape Hat­teras, and mi­grat­ing to the poles for cooler wa­ters in late sum­mer and early fall. It is rare to see a whale off the coast of Cape Cod from June to Oc­to­ber be­cause they have all headed north.

Right whales are not known for being gre­gar­i­ous, but they can be found in small groups. The typ­i­cal group size ranges from a sin­gle whale to a group of 12 but usu­ally two. The group com­po­si­tion varies from fe­male-calf, all males, or mixed. It is dif­fi­cult to de­ter­mine group size be­cause of the dis­per­sion. A larger group may be formed at far dis­tances stay­ing in con­tact by acoustics. Com­po­si­tion of groups is rarely known be­cause of the dif­fi­culty in sex­ing in­di­vid­u­als (Evans 1987).

They are fairly so­cial in that they will swim with other types of cetaceans. It was re­ported that one mother that was fed up with the play­ful an­tics of her calf swam un­der­neath the calf, then sur­faced, cradling the calf in her flip­pers.

• Key Behaviors
• natatorial
• motile
• migratory
• social

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Per­cep­tion

Right whales make sim­ple and com­plex low-fre­quency noises and a "belch-like ut­ter­ance" that is their most com­mon sound. These low-fre­quency sounds are chac­ter­is­tic of balleen whales while high-fre­quency sounds are more typ­i­cal of toothed whales. Other sounds are de­scribed as grunt­ing, moo­ing, moan­ing, sigh­ing, and bel­low­ing. The max­i­mum en­ergy (Hz) recorded in south­ern right whales ranged from 50-500 and the du­ra­tion ranged from 0.5 to 6.0 sec­onds. (Sli­jper 1979)

• Communication Channels
• tactile
• acoustic

• Perception Channels
• tactile
• acoustic
• ultrasound
• chemical

Food Habits

North­ern right whales tend to skim near the sur­face of the water feed­ing on small cope­pods, krill, and eu­phausi­ids. The whales swim along the sur­face, or just below, with their mouth open, skim­ming the zoo­plank­ton from the water. The water passes through a se­ries of large baleen plates which fil­ter out the food. The whale will skim the sur­face for a while, then close its mouth and push its tongue against the baleen to col­lect its meal. Whales tend not to feed until they find large con­cen­tra­tions of food. When they find these con­cen­tra­tions, they swim through the mass, mak­ing ac­cu­rate ad­just­ments to their course in order to max­i­mize their in­take (Sli­jper 1979, Evans 1987).

• Primary Diet
• planktivore

• Animal Foods
• aquatic crustaceans
• zooplankton

• Foraging Behavior
• filter-feeding

Pre­da­tion

Al­though they typ­i­cally don't live to­gether in groups, they may tem­porar­ily clus­ter to­gether to form a de­fen­sive cir­cle when threat­ened by a po­ten­tial preda­tor. In those cir­cum­stances, the whales form a cir­cle with flail­ing tails pointed out­wards. They may also move into shal­low wa­ters to at­tempt to overt the preda­tor but sharks and killer whales (orcas) are able to con­tinue to stalk in these depths. The right whale was hunted by man eas­ily be­cause it comes close to shore, is slow-mov­ing and floats when killed (Evans 1987).

These whales are pro­tected from most preda­tors by their for­mi­da­ble size, calves may be tar­geted by killer whales (orcas) and sharks.

• Known Predators

  • humans (Homo sapiens)
  • killer whales (Orcinus orca)
  • sharks (Chondrichthyes)

Ecosys­tem Roles

Baleen whales, like north­ern right whales, are im­por­tant as preda­tors on krill and other plank­tonic in­ver­te­brates in ma­rine en­vi­ron­ments.

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Pos­i­tive

At least 1,000 years ago, the ex­ploita­tion of this species began by hunters. Mainly, these whales were taken for blub­ber, used for oil for il­lu­mi­na­tion, and for meat. No longer is this the pri­mary threat to right whales. The main eco­nomic gain comes from eco-tourism which con­tin­ues to be a fast grow­ing in­dus­try (Ka­tona 1999).

• Positive Impacts
• body parts are source of valuable material
• ecotourism

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Neg­a­tive

There are no neg­a­tive ef­fects of north­ern right whales on hu­mans.

Con­ser­va­tion Sta­tus

North­ern right whales tend to move through the ocean at a fairly slow pace for an an­i­mal of their size, they feed near the sur­face, and they float when killed; thus they were con­sid­ered the "right" catch for whalers. Hunt­ing of right whales began as early as the 10th cen­tury. These whales were hunted ex­ten­sively dur­ing the 19th cen­tury, with as many as 100,000 whales slaugh­tered dur­ing this time. Right whales were dri­ven close to ex­tinc­tion early in the 20th cen­tury and were one of the first whales to be given in­ter­na­tional pro­tec­tion in 1935. At the first in­ter­na­tional Con­ven­tion for the Reg­u­la­tion of Whal­ing in 1935, a total ban on hunt­ing right whales was es­tab­lished. The pro­tec­tion of this species was broad­ened in 1972 with the pass­ing of the Ma­rine Mam­mal Pro­tec­tion Act. A major issue re­volv­ing around the con­ser­va­tion of the right whale is habi­tat mod­i­fi­ca­tion. Es­pe­cially since they use shal­low coastal la­goons and bays for breed­ing. Their num­bers are sta­ble and may even be in­creas­ing slightly in the North­west At­lantic and off South Africa. The most cur­rent pop­u­la­tion es­ti­mate of 295 whales may rep­re­sent the ap­prox­i­mate car­ry­ing ca­pac­ity. The car­ry­ing ca­pac­ity could be in­creased though if col­li­sions with ships and en­tan­gle­ment in fish­ing gear was de­creased. It may be decades be­fore the health of the right whale pop­u­la­tion is re­cov­ered. A re­cov­ery plan has been es­tab­lished with the dif­fi­cult duty of man­ag­ing a species that is hard to track. Luck­ily, ac­tiv­ity mod­i­fi­ca­tions are tak­ing place by peo­ple like the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, ship traf­fic con­trollers in major ship­ping lanes, and oth­ers. Fund­ing is al­ways a major ob­sta­cle but sup­port is being seen by in­di­vid­ual in­sti­tu­tions, states, and rel­e­vant sec­tors of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment (Cum­mings 1985, Ka­tona 1999).

North­ern At­lantic right whales are the most crit­i­cally en­dan­gered great whale, with fewer than 300 in­di­vid­u­als es­ti­mated. Pop­u­la­tions of this species don't show sig­nif­i­cant signs of in­creas­ing in num­ber, de­spite a ban on hunt­ing. At the cur­rent pop­u­la­tion num­bers species ex­tinc­tion is ex­pected in 190 years.

Cur­rent threats to right whales in­clude col­li­sions with boats, since they tend to rest and feed at the sur­face fre­quently, pol­lu­tion, be­com­ing en­tan­gled in fish nets, and sonic pol­lu­tion and dis­rup­tion caused by mil­i­tary prac­tices.

The his­tory of re­search and con­ser­va­tion of north­ern right whales pro­vides a num­ber of lessons that may be ap­plic­a­ble to other en­dan­gered species. First, suf­fi­cient fund­ing must be pro­vided to carry out an ef­fec­tive man­age­ment pro­gram. Sec­ond, per­sis­tence and pa­tience is needed to de­velop and im­ple­ment a slow mov­ing re­search pro­gram. Third, stud­ies may not meet tra­di­tional sci­en­tific stan­dards of proof be­cause sam­ple sizes are so small. Fourth, ef­fec­tive con­ser­va­tion will re­quire co­op­er­a­tion from fed­eral and state agen­cies as well as non­govern­men­tal groups. Fifth, in­ci­den­tal take of a species is much harder to reg­u­late than di­rected take like hunt­ing. Lastly, we should never be­come com­pla­cent about the state of our knowl­edge (Ka­tona 1999).

• IUCN Red List

  Endangered
  More information

• IUCN Red List

  Endangered
  More information

• US Federal List

  Endangered

• CITES

  Appendix I

Other Com­ments

An ar­ti­cle by R. Reeves quoted some Pil­grims who ar­rived in North Amer­ica in 1620. They wrote at that time, "Cape Cod was like to be a place of good fish­ing; for we saw daily great whales, of the best kind for oil and bone, come close aboard our ship, and, in fair weather, swim and play about with us." They are most likely refer­ing here to north­ern right whales. What must it have been like to be able to sail among these large mam­mals as they am­bled through the water? Un­for­tu­nately most of us will prob­a­bly never again be able to ex­pe­ri­ence this. Whales are not like Cal­i­for­nia con­dors, where cap­tive breed­ing ef­forts can be em­ployed. Be­cause they are sur­face feed­ers, they are es­pe­cially vul­ner­a­ble to pol­lu­tion. An oil re­fin­ery in the Bay of Fundy, for ex­am­ple, puts right whales and count­less other wildlife species at risk of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the toxic ef­fects of an oil spill.

North­ern right whales tend to be docile crea­tures (de­spite their size of about 17 m, and 78.5 to 106 met­ric tons). They do not at­tack a human un­less they feel threat­ened. They also ap­pear to be play­ful crea­tures, breach­ing out of the water (imag­ine the power needed to get 100 tons air­borne), and slap­ping the sur­face with their large fins. Some ob­servers even sug­gest that they stick their tails up out of the water so that their large tail flukes catch a breeze, al­low­ing them to sail. We can not af­ford to lose this great crea­ture.

Re­cent work on ge­netic vari­a­tion in right whales sug­gests that Pa­cific pop­u­la­tions of what has been con­sid­ered Eu­bal­aena glacialis rep­re­sent a dis­tinct species which is more closely re­lated to south­ern right whales, Eu­bal­aena aus­tralis. There­fore, north­ern right whales, Eu­bal­aena glacialis, should not be con­sid­ered to occur in the Pa­cific ocean. (Rosen­baum, et al., 2000)

Con­trib­u­tors

Brian Ar­bo­gast (ed­i­tor), Hum­boldt State Uni­ver­sity.

Jonathan Crane (au­thor), Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan-Ann Arbor.

Re­becca Scott (au­thor), Hum­boldt State Uni­ver­sity.

Ref­er­ences

Bon­ner, N. (1989) Whales of the world. pp. 48-58.

Chap­man, J.A., Feld­hamer, G.A., (1982) Wild Mam­mals of north amer­ica. pp. 415-30.

Mayo, C.A., Marx, M.K. (1990) Sur­face for­ag­ing be­hav­ior of the North At­lantic right whale, Eu­bal­aena glacialis, and as­so­ci­ated zoo­plank­ton char­ac­ter­is­tics. Cana­dian Jour­nal of Zo­ol­ogy, (68), pp. 2214-20.

Muri­son, L.D., Gaskin, D.E. (1989) The dis­tri­b­u­tion of right whales and zoo­plank­ton in the Bay of Fundy, Canada. Cana­dian Jour­nal of Zo­ol­ogy, (67), pp. 1411- 20.

Payne, R. (1994) Among whales. Nat­ural His­tory, (1), pp. 40-47.

Reeves, R.R. (1979) Right whale: Pro­tected but still in trou­ble. Na­tional Parks and Con­ser­va­tion Mag­a­zine, (2), pp. 10-15.

Reeves, R.R., Kraus, S., Turn­bull, P. (1983) Right whale refuge? Nat­ural His­tory, (4), pp. 40-44.

Leather­wood, S. and R. R. Reeves. 1983. The Sierra Club Hand­book of Whales and Dol­phins. Sierra Club Press, San Fran­cisco.

Cum­mings, W. 1985. Right Whales. New York, N.Y.: Aca­d­e­mic Press.

Ellis, R. 1985. The Book of Whales. New York, N.Y.: Al­fred A. Knopf, Inc..

Evans, P. 1987. The Nat­ural His­tory of Whales and Dol­phins. New York, N.Y.: Facts on File Pub­li­ca­tions.

Ka­tona, S., S. Kraus. 1999. Ef­forts to Con­serve the North At­lantic Right Whale. Wash­ing­ton, D.C.: Smith­son­ian In­sti­tu­tion Press.

Rosen­baum, H., R. Brownell, M. Brown, C. Scha­eff, V. Port­way, B. White, S. Malik, L. Pas­tene, N. Pate­naude, C. Baker, M. Goto, P. Best, P. Clapham, P. Hamil­ton, M. Moore, R. Payne, V. Rown­tree, C. Tynan, J. Ban­nis­ter, R. De­Salle. 2000. World-wide ge­netic dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of Eu­bal­aena: ques­tion­ing the num­ber of right whale species.. Mol­e­c­u­lar Ecol­ogy, 9: 1793-1802. Ac­cessed De­cem­ber 01, 2003 at http://​www.​nefsc.​noaa.​gov/​psb/​pubs/​rosenbaummolecol.​pdf.

Sli­jper, E. 1979. Whales. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Press.