![]() We use a variety of innovative techniques to study, protect, and recover these endangered whales. NOAA Fisheries and our partners are dedicated to conserving and rebuilding the North Atlantic right whale population. Increasing ocean noise levels from human activities are also a concern since the noise may interfere with right whale communication and increase their stress levels. Entanglement in fishing gear and vessel strikes are the leading causes of North Atlantic right whale mortality. (They got their name from being the "right" whales to hunt because they floated when they were killed.) Whaling is no longer a threat, but they have never recovered to pre-whaling numbers, and human interactions still present the greatest danger to this species. Right whales are baleen whales, feeding on copepods (tiny crustaceans) by straining huge volumes of ocean water through their baleen plates, which act like a sieve.īy the early 1890s, commercial whalers had hunted North Atlantic right whales to the brink of extinction. ![]() Two other species of right whales exist: the North Pacific right whale, which is found in the North Pacific Ocean, and the Southern right whale, which is found in the southern hemisphere. The North Atlantic right whale is one of the world’s most endangered large whale species the latest preliminary estimate suggests there are fewer than 350 remaining.
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