Wildlife & Railway Art - Frédérique Lucas

North Pacific right whale (Eubalaena japonica)

I present to you today, the most endangered great whale in the world: the North Pacific right whale. Just like its North Atlantic counterpart it is divided amongst a western and an eastern population. While the western populations is still in its low hundreds, the eastern population probably has less than 50 animals left in it. They used to be almost as common as Grey whales are now, but whaling in the past, and modern threats today have decimated their population. In a single decade (1840-1849) perhaps 20 to 31 thousand of these whales were killed.

Very little is known about the ecology of this species, as their population had largely dwindled by the time there was any scientific interest for their kind. However some notes were made of behaviour, and apparently these whales became more aggressive and harder to approach as whaling continued to take out more and more animals. Even today most North Pacific right whales are extremely sensitive to the presence of boats, often slipping away under the surface and quite literally hiding from view. Like all right whales they feed on copepods (small crustaceans) by ‘skimming’. The whales simply open their mouth and continuously let water - and food! - filter through their long baleen as they swim. The copepods get trapped in the fine mesh, and every once in a while the whale sweeps past the fringes with their tongue, and swallows the collected meal before opening their huge mouth again.