Climate change and warming ocean temperatures could be contributing to the decline in the population of North Atlantic right whales, a new study suggests.
Until about 2010, the whales could be found feeding on copepods, or tiny crustaceans, like plankton — a common food source for them — in their traditional feeding waters of the Bay of Fundy and Gulf of Maine, according to the study, titled Ocean Regime Shift is Driving Collapse of the North Atlantic Right Whale Population.
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In the past 10 years, however, warmer ocean temperatures have driven the crustaceans to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the right whales have followed.
“As right whale numbers visiting the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence foraging grounds rose, the risks associated with ship strikes and entanglement increased,” according to a peer-reviewed report published Wednesday in Oceanography magazine.
“With no management plan in place to protect it, the right whale population experienced an increasing number of serious entanglements and mortalities in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence beginning in 2015.”
Since 2017, 34 dead stranded whales have been found in Canadian and U.S. waters, with entanglements or vessel strikes being the leading cause of death, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The problem goes back to climate change and the impact it has had on ocean currents, namely the Gulf Stream, which moves warm water north, one of the study’s co-authors said.
Source: CBC