While it’s not clear yet exactly why the young right whale died, she did have a rope wrapped around her tail. Photo: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute//Michael Moore.
On January 28, 2024, a female North Atlantic right whale washed up dead on the shores of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.
North Atlantic right whales are in incredibly dire straits. Of all the large whale species, they are up there with the closest to extinction. Up until the 1890s, humans had all but wiped them from the face of the Earth with our hunting practices. They never fully recovered to the numbers they once hand, and although whaling isn’t much of threat to them any more, they’re still looking down the barrel of a variety of guns. Vessel strikes and discarded fishing gear are two of the deadliest.
NOAA Fisheries reports that only around 360 individuals remain in the oceans today, of those, only 70 are reproductively active females. “It’s devastating to hear about another loss to North Atlantic right whales,” Gib Brogan, a campaign director at Oceana, an international conservation group based in Washington, told The New York Times. “This death is even more troubling when it is a female calf that could have gone on to have many calves of her own for decades to come.”
The whale that washed up near Martha’s Vineyard’s Joseph Sylvia State Beach was found with a rope wrapped around its peduncle, which is the part of a whale where the tail fluke connects to the rest of the body. Not only was it wrapped around it, but it was embedded in the whale’s skin.
Parts of the rope the whale was entangled in were embedded so deeply in the whale’s body they weren’t able to remove them. Photo:rope is still present, deeply embedded in the wounds on the tailstock that officials were unable to remove. Photo: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution//Michael Moore
Scientists were able to identify the whale as whale #5120. She was the calf of a whale named Squilla, and was born in the calving season of 2021.
“This same whale was added as a serious injury case to the ongoing North Atlantic right whale Unusual Mortality Event on August 31, 2022, after the first sighting of a serious entanglement,” the NOAA wrote in a press release. “It will now be moved to the mortality total for dead animals documented in the Unusual Mortality Event.”
While the exact cause of death hasn’t been determined as of this writing, experts are planning a necropsy. It’s likely that the rope had at least a hand in it, as it would make both swimming and feeding difficult. It could also lead to life-threatening infections.
It’s been a bad few years for North Atlantic right whales, with 37 deaths since 2017.
