An endangered right whale was spotted in a unprecedented sighting off the coast of Marin County on Friday, astonishing scientists.
Fewer than 40 of this species, which is one in every of the rarest whales on this planet, are thought to have survived.
“It was amazing,” said research ecologist Jan Roletto, who observed the whale about three miles west of Point Reyes National Seashore aboard a research vessel for Applied California Current Ecosystem Studies.
The weather on Friday was rough, with strong winds whipping up waves 12 to 14 feet high. The goal of the research team's week-long trip was to check wildlife as a part of a partnership between Greater Farallones and Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuaries and Point Blue Conservation Science.
But the whale was unmistakable.
“It appeared right in front of us” after which stayed there for nearly 20 minutes, said Roletto, research coordinator for the Greater Farallones and Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuaries.
As they stood together on the ship's commentary deck, Roletto and marine ecologist Kirsten Lindquist immediately turned and checked out one another.
“We both knew immediately what it was,” said Roletto. The identification has since been officially confirmed by the NOAA Marine Mammal Lab in Seattle based on photos and videos.
The whale had a particular V-shaped blowhole. It was broad and jet black, with no dorsal fin. And on its head was at the very least one cluster of telltale “calluses,” rough, white patches of skin.
“It seemed to be resting,” Roletto said. “It wasn't feeding. It wasn't traveling. It moved a little bit and then sank.”
Like other whales, the species was nearly worn out by business whaling. But unlike other whales – akin to humpbacks, gray whales and blue whales – it has recovered way more slowly. Right whale populations are larger within the Atlantic and the Southern Hemisphere.
North Pacific right whales were favored by hunters because they swim slowly near shore and float on the water's surface after death. By the tip of the nineteenth century, as much as 40,000 North Pacific right whales had been slaughtered.
The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling banned business hunting of right whales within the North Pacific in 1937, and their numbers began to rise.
However, illegal whaling by the Soviet Union within the northern Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea within the Nineteen Sixties again brought the species to the brink of extinction.
They have been protected under the Endangered Species Act since 1970. Although whaling now not poses a threat, the species continues to be threatened by human activities, akin to entanglement in fishing nets and marine debris, ship collisions, the consequences of climate change, oil and gas extraction, and ocean noise.
North Pacific right whales are baleen whales that feed by filtering large amounts of seawater through their comb-like baleen, catching copepods and other zooplankton.
Because they’re so rare, little or no is thought concerning the movements, migration, reproduction or calving of this North Pacific species, said Jim Scarff, an independent whale researcher in Berkeley. Tagging is difficult and unsuccessful, he added.
“There is remarkably little knowledge about their distribution,” he said.
According to the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission, surveys by the National Marine Fisheries Service have discovered a small variety of North Atlantic right whales within the Gulf of Alaska in a small area called Barnabas Trough. Twelve individuals were discovered within the southeastern Bering Sea.
Over the past decade, there have been a handful of discoveries off the coast of British Columbia and Washington state.
In March 2023, stalk watchers sighted one near shore at Pt. Pinos in Monterey Bay. In April 2022, a fisherman reported a sighting near Point Ano Nuevo in San Mateo County.
“It's always a single animal, often in the spring,” Scarff said. “And then it's never seen again.”
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