Two North Atlantic right whales, among the most at-risk marine mammals, were spotted swimming in the Bahamas on April 15, marking the first time the species has been seen in the nation’s waters.
“That moment for me was breathtaking, and I couldn’t fully gather myself. I thought it was fake at first,” Isaac Ellis, a captain at Neal Watson’s Bimini Scuba Center who spotted the whales with a group he was taking on a dolphin-watching tour, said in a statement. “Once in a lifetime moment for sure.”
During this time of the year, critically endangered North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) are typically found nearly 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) to the north, off the coast of Boston in the northeastern U.S.
However, scientists at the New England Aquarium in Boston confirmed the identities of the whales in the videos taken by Ellis’s group through a photo database, identifying them as adult females they’ve named Koala and Curlew. Both individuals had been spotted outside of their normal range in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year.
“It is fairly unusual for right whales to be seen in the Gulf of Mexico, and there are no recorded sightings of right whales in The Bahamas,” Philip Hamilton, a senior scientist at the Anderson Cabot Center, said in a statement. “What inspired them to make this journey will likely remain a mystery.”
Hamilton added that it’s also unusual for two North Atlantic right whales to stick together unless they’re mother and calf, which Koala and Curlew are not. Researchers have been tracking Koala since her birth in 2009 and Curlew since hers in 2011; the pair have been seen swimming together for the last several months.
The latest population estimate puts North Atlantic right whale numbers at just 372. More than a quarter of the population died since 2011, mostly from ship strikes and entanglements with fishing gear.
But another factor is also making life more challenging for these whales: their main food source, tiny crustaceans called copepods, are declining in the rapidly warming waters of the western North Atlantic, where temperatures are rising roughly four times faster than the global ocean average.
Last year, another North Atlantic right whale was photographed off the coast of Ireland, the first confirmed sighting in the region in several decades.
Banner image: Two North Atlantic right whales photographed in the Bahamas. Image courtesy of Jero Prieto/Pelagic Life.
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