North Atlantic right whale: a giant to protect, all the way up the St. Lawrence

Meet the North Atlantic right whale

The North Atlantic right whale can reach 16 metres in length and weigh several tens of tonnes. Its massive body is almost entirely black, sometimes with a few white patches on the belly. It has no dorsal fin, and its V-shaped blow can rise five metres into the air — two clues that give it away from a distance.

Its head is covered in callosities: patches of rough skin whitened by tiny crustaceans. Their pattern is unique to each whale, like a fingerprint. Using it, researchers at the New England Aquarium maintain a photo catalogue of more than 800 whales, living and dead, with records going back to 1935.

It is a baleen whale. It swims slowly with its mouth open, at or just below the surface, filtering zooplankton — especially tiny crustaceans called copepods. It lives for at least 50 years. A female has her first calf at around ten years old, after a pregnancy of about a year, and the newborn is already more than four metres long.

Every winter, some females head south to give birth off Georgia and Florida. For the rest of the year, the whales move north to feed: Cape Cod Bay, the Bay of Fundy, the Scotian Shelf and the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Did you know? Every known right whale has a catalogue number, and many have names. In 2025, a female called Monarch was spotted with her calf in Cape Cod Bay, far from the usual calving grounds.

Why it is endangered

This whale was hunted heavily in the western North Atlantic from the early 1500s until the 1920s. It has been protected from whaling since 1935, but it never really recovered.

Today, its two main causes of death are human:

• Fishing gear. More than 86% of right whales have been entangled in ropes at least once, some as many as nine times. Ropes can injure them, exhaust them or stop them from feeding.
• Collisions with ships. Because it feeds close to the surface, the right whale is often hit by vessels.

In 2017, the situation became critical in Canada: 12 right whales were found dead in the Gulf of St. Lawrence between June and September, and five more in US waters. Necropsies pointed to ship strikes and entanglements. The population fell to 358 animals in 2020. Climate change adds further pressure on an already fragile population.

What is being done to save it

Since 2017, Canada has put protection measures in place in the Gulf of St. Lawrence every year. Since 2020, vessels 13 metres and longer must slow to 10 knots across more than 65,000 km² of the Gulf, with fines of up to $250,000. A voluntary slowdown is also requested in the Cabot Strait, and shipping zones slow down whenever a whale is detected there. Fishing areas close as soon as a whale is detected. Since 2026, harvesters are also notified of detections that don’t trigger a closure, along with best-practice advice. Harvesters are trialling whale-safe gear, such as ropes that break under strain, and must mark their gear and report any they lose. In February 2026, Canada published a national strategy to roll out this gear more widely.

In the United States, specialised teams free entangled whales, and NOAA is backing technical solutions to reduce collisions and entanglements.

These efforts are starting to pay off. The population was estimated at 384 whales in 2024, up 2.1% on the previous year. In 2025, no deaths were detected and 11 calves were born, four of them to first-time mothers. None of these calves is known to have died, whereas in 2024 five of the twenty calves born did not survive. And the gap between births for 2025’s mothers was the shortest since 2013. NOAA describes itself as “cautiously optimistic”. But experts stress that this is no time to ease off. In 2024, four breeding females died — a huge loss for such a small population.

How you can help

Sauvons les animaux does not collect donations. These recognised organisations work for the right whale:

• New England Aquarium: sponsor an identified whale and support population monitoring. Sponsor a right whale
• WWF-Canada supports research and protection measures in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Donate to WWF-Canada

And in everyday life:

1. If you go boating on the St. Lawrence or the Atlantic coast, respect slow-down zones, keep your distance from whales and report sightings, for example with the Whale Alert app.
2. Never leave rope or netting in the water, and report any abandoned fishing gear.
3. Spread the word: this whale lives in Canadian waters too.