John Durban (NOAA) and Holly Fearnbach (SR3), NMFS research permit #17355
Surveillance of right whales in the North Atlantic show that individuals born today will grow to be 1 metre shorter, on average, than whales born in the early 1980s.
Joshua Stewart at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in San Diego, California, and his colleagues have used surveillance data collected from aircraft and drones to investigate how North Atlantic right whales (
Eubalaena glacialis) have changed over time.
The whales have been monitored consistently for decades, and researchers can identify individuals and know when each was born. Stewart’s team collected 202 length measurements of 129 of the whales born between 1981 and 2019: 133 measurements were taken from aircraft between 2000 and 2002, and 69 measurements were obtained using remotely operated drones between 2016 and 2019.