The latest official population estimate for the world's most endangered species of whale is grim.
A group of international experts recently confirmed there were about 340 surviving North Atlantic right whales as of last year _ down from 348 recorded in 2020.
Only 15 calves were born in 2022, far below the average of 24 reported in the early 2000s, with no first-time mothers this season, supporting research showing a downward trend in the number of females capable of breeding.
Despite these gloomy findings, some remarkably good news emerged in October ahead of the annual meeting of the Right Whale Consortium, which brought together researchers, fishing industry representatives and conservationists in New Bedford, Mass.
Sean Brillant, a senior conservation biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Federation, says big strides are being made in the use of a relatively new technology designed to prevent whales from getting entangled in fishing gear _ one of the leading causes of right whale deaths.
Traditional lobster and crab traps are dropped to the ocean floor and later retrieved by hauling up long ropes that hang from floating buoys, but the technology known as ropeless or on-demand gear uses an electronic homing device to find the traps, which are retrieved using remotely inflated spools of rope or lift bags.
Elimination of floating gear could drastically reduce the risk of entanglements, which account for 82 per cent of documented right whale deaths, according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Falmouth, Mass.
Brillant says his organization and a few others had great success this year lending ropeless gear to Canadian snow crab fishers whose fishing grounds were otherwise closed when right whales showed up in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.