Right whale deaths pinned on shift in feeding ground

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Climate change is sending more hungry right whales into the Gulf of St. Lawrence to feed and that is resulting in more deaths from collisions with ships and tangles with fishing gear, officials say.

The North Atlantic giants swim on the surface jaws “wide open,” scooping up zooplankton and krill. They take large gulps of water and then filter out their tiny prey using comb-like baleen plates that resemble a broom brush, said Matthew Hardy of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

Right whales, endangered since the 1930s and thought at one point to be near extinction, have grown slowly in number from 300 to 500 in the world in recent years, DFO scientists estimate.

With rising temperatures, their habitat has apparently changed from summer feeding in the Grand Manan Basin of the Bay of Fundy to the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Eight whales — or about one per cent of the species according to conservationists —have been found dead since the beginning of June, and at least two others have been rescued from snow crab gear this month, including the whale saved by Joe Howlett. Howlett, 59, a Campobello Island, N.B., fisherman dedicated to rescuing whales from fishing gear, died on July 10 after freeing a whale from snow crab lines near Shippigan, N.B.