MARINE MAMMAL COMMISSION — Annual Report for 1992 
female right whales bear only a single calf every two 
to four years at most, the premature loss of even a 
single animal can have a major effect on population 
recovery. In this regard, evidence from strandings 
along the cast coasts of the United States and Canada 
indicates that at least 10 North Atlantic right whales 
have been killed over the past 20 years by collisions 
with large vessels or entanglement in commercial 
fishing gear. Similarly, one of the few recent records 
of a right whale in the North Pacific Ocean is of a 
dead animal found on the southern tip of Russia’s 
Kamchatka Peninsula in October 1989. Wrapped 
around its tail stock was a 20-meter length of salmon 
gillnet. 
Right whales also may be affected by human 
activities that do not cause direct physical harm. For 
example, vessel noise and disturbance may alter 
normal behavior, cause stress, and perhaps induce 
animals to leave or avoid preferred habitat. Right 
whales and their habitat also may be affected adverse- 
ly by dredging and dredge spoil disposal, exploration 
and development of offshore petroleum and hard 
mineral resources, oil spills, municipal outfalls, whale 
research, whale-watching activities, and perhaps other 
human activities. 
Right Whale Research 
Intensive research on right whales in the western 
North Atlantic Ocean began early in the 1980s. As 
discussed in previous annual reports, the Commission 
played an important role in helping encourage, sup- 
port, and direct these research efforts. Among other 
things, it supported studies to assess the status of right 
whales (see, for example, Appendix B, Hain 1992, 
and Appendix C, Winn 1984, Winn et al. 1985, and 
Brownell et al. 1985) and to help identify needed 
research and management activities (see, for example, 
Appendix B, Kraus 1985 and Kraus and Kenney 1991, 
and Appendix C, The Georgia Conservancy 1986). 
Right whale research received a major boost in 
1986. That year Congress appropriated $500,000 to 
the National Marine Fisheries Service to initiate a 
long-term program of research by a consortium of 
non-governmental research organizations formed to 
study right whales along the Atlantic coasts of the 
United States and Canada. Since then Congress has 
50 
appropriated from $230,000 to $250,000 a year to the 
Service to continue the consortium’s right whale 
studies. In addition to these funds, several Federal 
agencies, particularly the Minerals Management 
Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, and most 
recently the Navy have supported right whale studies. 
These cooperative efforts have enabled scientists to 
monitor right whales in all five areas off the United 
States and Canada known to be used regularly by right 
whales, develop a photo-identification catalogue of 
individual animals, investigate and necropsy dead 
beach-cast right whales, collect tissue samples for 
genetic and other types of analyses, and develop and 
maintain a computerized data management system. 
To review recent research results and other matters 
pertaining to western North Atlantic right whales, the 
National Marine Fisheries Service convened a work- 
shop on 14-15 April 1992 in Silver Spring, Maryland. 
Scientists engaged in right whale research reviewed 
the recent data and briefly summarized their findings 
in a workshop report distributed by the Service in 
October 1992. Among other things, the report notes 
that as of the end of 1991, 317 individual right 
whales, four of which are known to have died, had 
been identified and catalogued. This photo catalogue 
has proved a valuable source of information. 
For instance, the belief that the remaining right 
whales in the North Atlantic Ocean are part of a 
single population is supported by photographic evi- 
dence from two whales. One animal photographed off 
southeast Greenland in 1987 was re-photographed off 
southern Nova Scotia in 1989. Another animal, 
photographed as a calf off Georgia and in the Labra- 
dor Basin in the winter of 1988-1989, was re-photo- 
graphed as a juvenile in the Bay of Fundy in the 
summer of 1990. The photo catalogue also provides 
an age record for one whale of at least 55 years. The 
record is based on an adult female photographed with 
a calf off Florida in 1935 and re-photographed off 
Massachusetts in 1959, 1989, and 1992. 
Data from dead stranded animals, as well as pic- 
tures of live animals that have been particularly well 
photographed, have been used to assess interactions 
between whales and ships and entanglement in fishing 
gear. Evidence from propeller wounds or attached 
debris suggests that, of the 25 right whales known to 
