Calf Count Edges Up – Georgia Wildlife Blog

We have a late addition to the calving total for 2024-2025.

The 11th North Atlantic right whale calf of the season was documented last month in Cape Cod Bay. The mom, right whale catalog No. 2460 and nicknamed Monarch, was not seen this winter in the Southeast, the only known calving grounds for these imperiled whales.

Mom-and-calf pairs showing up first outside the Southeast is not the norm, NOAA notes. But this marked the third time it happened this season, with nontraditional debuts including Accordion (No. 4150), spotted with a calf off the New York/New Jersey coast in February, and whale No. 4540, a first-time mom seen with her calf in December off Virginia.

With right whales, every calf is crucial. Yet the good news last month about Monarch does not make this calving season a success. Eleven calves is too few. The total in 2023-2024 was 20 (although two died, one after being hit by a vessel and another, a dependent calf, after its mother died from catastrophic injuries consistent with a vessel strike). Even 20 isn’t enough, though.

As DNR senior wildlife biologist Jessica Thompson has explained, scientists estimate that about 36 calves a year are needed to stabilize the population and 50 to increase it.

“Considering there are only some 70 breeding-age females left in the population, 50 calves a year is not possible,” Thompson said. “But if vessel strikes and the rate of whales being entangled (in commercial fishing gear) were significantly reduced or even eliminated, that would or could lead to recovery.”

Girls’ trip update: After venturing as far west into the Gulf as Alabama, Curlew and Koala (Nos. 4190 and 3940) made it back to the Atlantic Ocean. Then they promptly cruised past the Bahamas, becoming the first right whales documented in that island country.

An orca and its prey off North Carolina (Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute/NOAA permit 26919)

Killer photograph: Winter aerial surveys for right whales occasionally spot other whales in the Southeast. But a killer whale eating a bluefin tuna? That’s a treat.

In March, the Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute survey team photographed the orca above 14 nautical miles off Kitty Hawk, N.C. While this was the research institute’s first orca sighting since its right whale surveys were expanded to North Carolina five years ago, killer whales have been recorded near the Outer Banks as far back as the 1700s. Orcas also have been documented farther south, including off the Florida Panhandle (video). And they do prey on tuna, even on some caught in commercial fishing.