This The Guardian article discusses why the Right whale population is declining – ocean warming, research says. A report shows that the animal’s food supply shifted, causing them to travel farther for food and moving them closer to shipping lanes.
The endangered North Atlantic right whale faces increased odds because its main food supply has shifted due to ocean warming, according to new research.
Scientists have been searching for an explanation for a precipitous decline in the North Atlantic right whale population, which has dropped from 482 in 2010 to about 411 today.
A paper by 17 authors from the US, Canada and Norway, published this month in the journal Oceanography, links an influx of warm water in 2010 to a reduction in the whales’ key food supply, Calanus finmarchicus, a small crustacean, in the Gulf of Maine, the area off the US coast in which the whales spend their summers.