Rare right whale spotted in Cape Cod
One of the rarest creatures on the planet — the endangered right whale — has appeared in the Atlantic Ocean.
The marine mammals are thought by experts to have a population of just 500 worldwide, half of which have been residing near the plankton-rich Cape Cod Bay, near the US state of Massachusetts, the last few Springs. This year, it looks like they are back in record numbers.
North Atlantic right whales have foraged for centuries in Cape Cod Bay, where their numbers were decimated by whalers who hunted them for their oil and plastic-like baleen bone. As a result, for a stretch in the late 1990s fewer than 30 whales were sighted each year. Now, up to 70 whales have been sighted.
Charles “Stormy” Mayo, a senior scientist and director of right whale ecology at the Centre for Coastal Studies in Provincetown called the phenomenon “Rather extraordinary and somewhat mind-blowing.” He attributes the mass migration to shifting ocean currents-possibly due to global climate change — that are pumping more plankton into the bay, even as the whales’ traditional feeding grounds off the Maine coast falter.
“They’re a little like cows in a field. They go away from places that are not good and go to places that are good,” he said.
US Federal law forbids getting within 500 yards of a right whale and requires ships to slow to 10 knots — roughly 11.5 miles per hour.
Scrollt through the gallery above to see these beautiful creatures.
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