Demography of the endangered North Atlantic right whale

Masami Fujiwara () and Hal Caswell
Additional contact information
Masami Fujiwara: MS34, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Hal Caswell: MS34, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Nature, 2001, vol. 414, issue 6863, 537-541

Abstract: Abstract Northern right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) were formerly abundant in the northwestern Atlantic, but by 1900 they had been hunted to near extinction. After the end of commercial whaling the population was thought to be recovering slowly; however, evidence indicates that it has been declining since about 1990 (ref. 1). There are now fewer than 300 individuals, and the species may already be functionally extinct2,3 owing to demographic stochasticity or the difficulty of females locating mates in the vast Atlantic Ocean (Allee effect4). Using a data set containing over 10,000 sightings of photographically identified individuals we estimated trends in right whale demographic parameters since 1980. Here we construct, using these estimates, matrix population models allowing us to analyse the causes of right whale imperilment. Mortality has increased, especially among mother whales, causing declines in population growth rate, life expectancy and the mean lifetime number of reproductive events between the period 1980–1995. Increased mortality of mother whales can explain the declining population size, suggesting that the population is not doomed to extinction as a result of the Allee effect. An analysis of extinction time shows that demographic stochasticity has only a small effect, but preventing the deaths of only two female right whales per year would increase the population growth rate to replacement level.

Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/35107054 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:414:y:2001:i:6863:d:10.1038_35107054

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/35107054

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().