North Atlantic right whales, a beleaguered species of fewer than 400 individuals, gave researchers new reason to hope this winter off the coast of Georgia.
The bus-sized giants migrate to the Southeast to give birth. And for this calving season they did so in numbers unseen in nearly two decades, producing at least 23 calves that survey teams documented from planes and boats.
In all, the Georgia team saw 122 individual whales, about a third of the entire population.
“It was a really, really great season,” said Jessica Thompson, a senior wildlife biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and manager of the agency’s marine mammal program.
Thompson and her team saw right whales of all ages, from newborn to 50-something. And they saw them nearly every time weather and sea conditions allowed them to look.
“It was a really joyful and fantastic time in the calving grounds this season, because I think we only had one vessel survey where we did not work with whales the whole season,” she said.
A dramatic December
Starting each November, right whales migrate south from their feeding grounds off New England and Canada to give birth in the shallow waters off South Carolina, Georgia and the east coast of Florida. Researchers suggest the water temperature here is just right — not too hot for the blubber-insulated moms and not too cold for their skinnier newborns.
The Georgia DNR team kicked off its season with a heroic effort to free a whale named Division from heavy fishing rope that wrapped around its body and cut into its blowhole. The team was working to retrieve a skin sample from another whale — the second calf of the season — when it got the call on Dec. 3 about the struggling animal off Jekyll Island. They hurried to its location and worked for over two days, enlisting other state and federal partners, to cut more than 300 feet of rope from Division.
After attaching a tracking buoy to the still partially entangled whale, they hoped the 4-year old male could be intercepted by other rescue crews. Division swam to New England then turned back south, but no other rescue could be attempted. Division’s carcass was identified off North Carolina in January.
The rope that Thompson’s team recovered was later identified as “ghost gear” a Canadian snow crab fisherman lost in 2020, the first year Canada mandated the reporting of lost gear. That information, which is still under investigation, helps protect whales in the future.
“We can start asking the questions, ‘why did the whales encounter it? Should that have been an area where there was a closure in place? And if there should have been one, why wasn’t there one?'” Thompson said.
Calves kept coming
Melanie White directs the North Atlantic right whale conservation program for the Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute. She and her two colleagues criss-cross the sky off the Georgia coast in a four-seater Cessna Skymaster as often as possible in calving season. Their 37 aerial surveys this season documented the whales and helped the DNR team on the water locate mother/calf pair for biopsies that facilitate DNA testing.
White has been conducting aerial surveys for 20 years. This past season was “refreshing,” she said.
“Whales were back in the area doing what they’re supposed to do,” she said. “We had lots of sightings.”
Right whales got their name from whalers who knew they were the “right” whales to hunt. Whalers targeted them because they swim slowly, live close to shore, and float when killed, yielding high amounts of oil and baleen, according to the New England Aquarium. Researchers now identify individual whales by their scars or by the patterns formed by callous-like skin on their heads, giving them nicknames inspired by the shapes they see.
Along with entanglements, right whales are threatened by vessel strikes. At least four of this year’s mother whales have been hit by boats, the International Fund for Animal Welfare reports.
White was pleased this season to check in on an old friend, a 44-year old whale named Magic who was seen with her eighth known calf off Amelia Island in January.
“Magic is an older whale. And again, I’ve gotten a chance to see her a handful of times over the calving seasons. She holds a special spot in my heart,” White said.
Two of this year’s first-time whale mothers are 10-year-olds. The NOAA Fisheries Service sees that as as an encouraging sign. They note that while female right whales become sexually mature at about age 10, researchers have previously observed right whales beginning to calve later in life, between 15 and 20 years old, due to stress.
And there are other signs of resilience.
Thompson was excited to see a whale named Juno back with a new calf this year. Juno gave birth in 2024 but that calf died after being struck by a vessel. There’s usually a longer interval between births, but it can be shortened if a calf dies, Thompson said.
Juno and her new calf were spotted off Tybee on Dec. 27. They were last seen off North Carolina in late March, headed north.
“She herself has been entangled,” Thompson said. “She herself has interacted with vessels, and her previous calf, of course, died from a vessel strike. So if we leave them alone and we stay out of their way, they’re resilient, and they will continue to do their work to keep their population going forward.”
Thompson also delighted in the resighting of a whale named Millipede and her calf. This pair was the one DNR was working with when they got called away for the disentanglement in early December. But they saw the pair again off Blackbeard Island on one of the last field days of the season. In the meantime, Millipede had taken an unusual excursion into the Gulf of Mexico.
“So she went into unprotected areas with her calf, and she was there for a number of weeks. And then, typically, once they come back around from the Gulf side, they catch that Gulf Stream, and we don’t resight them again. But we did see her.”
It was a “my how you’ve grown” moment.
“We’re just like, ‘Wow, her calf is huge,’ and (we were able) to see the callosity starting to form.”
Fighting chance
Twenty-three calves is more than recent years, but it doesn’t change the fact that right whales are highly endangered.
“What will be most important is if the majority of these calves survive to adulthood,” Thompson said. “We’re hoping that this is the start of a trend, and that all of the effort from the public to those on the ground doing research every day, and the managers and the fishermen and all the community that has been working together, that we’ve been making forward progress that is benefiting this species.”
In the Southeast, vessel speed limits have been effective in protecting right whales, she said. Backed by shipping and recreational boating groups, the Trump administration has promoted emerging technology to detect whales and warn vessels of their presence, urging its use instead of speed restrictions. Such technology may be a useful aid to the species’ recovery in the future, but Thompson doesn’t believe “we’re there yet.”
Both Thompson and White keep looking forward.
“These are numbers that we we need to continue to see to give these whales a fighting chance,” White said. “Every calf is an important calf, whether it’s one or 20. But we need these numbers to be in the 20s, to give this species a chance. So it’s very encouraging. But that doesn’t mean the job’s done by any stretch.”
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