The Auckland Islands Marine Reserve protects an area 300 miles south of New Zealand’s South Island, where these two robust southern rights are part of a recovering population thought to include more than 1,000 whales.
Scars on this adult in the Bay of Fundy likely resulted from entanglement in fishing gear that cut through the skin.
Trawling with open mouth along the surface of Cape Cod Bay, a North Atlantic right whale feeds on the move. Water flowing into its mouth carries tens of thousands of copepods—crustaceans each about the size of a grain of rice—toward the sieve-like plates of baleen, which strain them out as the water flows back into the bay.
Signature V-shaped plumes of spray shoot from a North Atlantic right whale in the Bay of Fundy. The whale exhales, clearing water from the opening of its dual blowholes, then draws in air.
A calf's open jaws reveal a pink soft palate that releases excess body heat, and a hanging sieve of baleen that strains tiny prey from the sea. Unique to right whales, rough skin callosities develop in patterns that identify individuals as clearly as fingerprints.
A female gets a playful bump from her new calf in warm shallows near Florida's Amelia Island. North Atlantic right whale mothers give birth and spend winters off the south Georgia–north Florida coast.
Far from busy ship lanes, a 40-foot southern right whale swims in safety near the remote Auckland Islands.
source: national geographic channel
