NOAA Fisheries closed the 2025-2026 North Atlantic right whale calving season with 23 mom-calf pairs identified — the highest count since 2009 and the strongest single-year recovery signal for a species reduced to roughly 380 whales, including about 70 reproductively active females. [1] The southeast US calving grounds are now empty for the year; the moms and calves have begun the migration north.

Twenty of the 23 mothers were returning whales. [1] Thirteen calved on a three-to-four-year cycle — the textbook reproductive interval — against a recent average closer to seven to ten years. The compression of that interval is what the survey teams flagged as the underlying biological story: foraging conditions on the feeding grounds appear to have given enough females enough body condition to bear young again.

One pair was sighted in the Gulf of America in January and February, the sixth such detection since 2000. The Current GA's coverage logged the geographic edge case as a sign the population is using a slightly wider foraging map than the survey grid assumes. [2]

The other ledger is still open. Snow Crab Area 12 closures in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and a PEI lobster grid closure followed an April detection off Prince Edward Island. [3] Entanglement in fishing gear and vessel strikes remain the leading documented causes of right-whale mortality, per NOAA's Unusual Mortality Event tally — more than 20% of the population sick, injured or killed since 2017. The births are ahead this year. The deaths have not stopped.

-- KENJI NAKAMURA, Tokyo