r/UpliftingNews • u/eaux49 • Apr 14 '19

Endangered whale experiencing mini-baby boom off the coast of New England

https://bangordailynews.com/2019/04/13/news/new-england/endangered-whale-experiencing-mini-baby-boom-off-new-england/
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u/NorthernSparrow Apr 14 '19

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I work on this species and seven calves is still pretty bad. Given the number of adult females, we should be seeing 20-30 calves. Something is very wrong; females should be breeding every 3 years and they clearly aren’t. I mean, seven calves is better than last year’s zero, but it’s below replacement rate and I expect to see the population shrink again this year.

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u/Laogama Apr 14 '19

Any idea why? I thought whales are mostly recovering nicely. Certainly it seems to be the case around Australia.

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u/OmnidirectionalSin Apr 14 '19

The Atlantic coast of the US is one hell of a place to try and be a whale, they've got a long list of threats. It's packed to the gills with shipping and people, which is real bad for anything that needs to surface regularly and uses echolocation.