Federal researchers have embarked on a month-long Gulf of Alaska cruise to search for a group of North Pacific right whales, the few descendants of a population that was hunted to near-extinction.
The researchers, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, are crisscrossing the waters near Kodiak in an area where scientists spotted a juvenile, a sighting that gave them hope for the future of right whales in this part of the world.
The cruise began out of Kodiak Sunday, and the trip will also end there, said NOAA spokesperson Maggie Mooney-Seus.
Once known by commercial whalers as the "right whale" to kill because they swim slowly and have a high fat content that makes their carcasses float, right whales are now among the rarest of the world's marine mammals. The eastern North Pacific population -- the population nearest to Alaska -- was for many years feared extinct, the victim of commercial hunts that were made illegal in the middle of the 20th century and illegal Soviet hunts after that.
Sighting in recent years proved the existence of a remnant population, and in 2005, a sighting of a right whale calf near Kodiak was further evidence of potential growth.
The eastern North Pacific population is now estimated at 30 individuals, though it is a very rough estimate about an animal that is cloaked in some mystery, NOAA officials said.
"We actually know very little about this species," Brenda Rone of NOAA's Alaska Fisheries Science Center and the chief scientist on the cruise, said in a NOAA statement. "We hope to collect photos, tissue and fecal samples, as well as sound recordings of sighted whales."
There are concerns about human impacts on the tiny population, Rone said in the statement.
"For example, how will changes in the Arctic due to climate change, which could open up the Northwest Passage as a shipping route, impact right whales? It is imperative that we fill the critical gaps in knowledge if we are to save the North Pacific right whale!" she said.
The search is starting with acoustics, NOAA said. Right whales have a distinctive underwater call that scientists liken to a gunshot. If those calls are detected, the scientists aboard the cruise will try to locate the whales, photograph them and, if possible, get tissue samples and attach radio trackers, NOAA said.
Right whales have growths on their heads, called callosities, that develop in unique patterns, enabling scientists to identify individuals from photographs, the agency said.
Other populations of right whales in the world are struggling, though not at the level of the eastern North Pacific population.
The western North Pacific right whale population, which swims in waters off Russia, Japan, China and Vietnam, is believed to be in the low hundreds, Mooney-Seus said. The North Atlantic right whale population is believed to number about 450, according to NOAA, and is also considered critically endangered.
Discovery of the remnant eastern North Pacific right whales -- and legal action by the Center for Biological Diversity -- prompted NOAA in 2006 to established critical habitat for the animals in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea. After that, NOAA in 2008 formally designated the eastern North Pacific whales as a distinct population, eligible for Endangered Species Act protections separate from those granted to North Atlantic right whales. In 2013, NOAA issued a recovery plan for eastern North Pacific right whales; a separate plan already existed for North Atlantic right whales.