North Atlantic right whale
Atlantic right whales with calf
The Atlantic right whales ( Eubalaena glacialis ) is a large up to 18 m kind of right whales, which is common in the North Atlantic.
Features
Atlantic right whales are typically 13-16 m tall; the scientifically maximum length is 18 m, allegedly also 21 m can be achieved. The weight of such a colossal is 100 tonnes. As with all right whales lack a dorsal fin. The color is uniformly black. Striking is an extreme parasite infestation by barnacles, Walläuse and other crustaceans that look from a distance like vast white spots. Especially close is this growth on the forehead, where the parasites are an original white " cap ".
There are on each side of the snout 300 Barten. Two blowholes produce a V-shaped blow. The Blubber (bacon, can be boiled out of the Tran ) accounts for 40 % of body weight; no other whale has such a high Blubberanteil.
Dissemination
Atlantic right whales live in the summer in sub-polar regions and in winter in temperate latitudes. In the eastern part of the Atlantic, the northern right is completely eradicated. Previously, it was found that whale in summer near Iceland and winter in the Gulf of Biscay. This was also the German name " Biskayawal ", which is used every now and then. The western Atlantic populations remain within the summer off the coast of New England and in winter in the Gulf of Mexico and east of Florida.
Way of life
Atlantic right whales are very slow-moving whales, which travel at about 8 km / h. Like all baleen whales seven it the food with their beards; remain mainly copepods caught by them, but also small fish. Right whales have been previously gathered for the hikes to large associations of hundreds of individual animals and more; because of the extreme rarity of this type that is no longer possible today.
Whaling and protection
Because Atlantic right whales live near the coast, they were among the first captured by whalers whales. Already in the 16th century, tens of thousands of right whales were killed. Then they were in the eastern Atlantic has become so rare that European whalers dodged to the bowhead whale. In the colonies of New England, however, it was soon discovered that thousands of right whales were staying in the summer off the coasts. In the 17th and 18th centuries, these stocks have been almost exterminated. Only after it was discovered the Pacific right whales, and 1805-1914 and they were almost exterminated.
The original stock size of the North Kapers is estimated at 100,000 animals, still live three hundred Atlantic right whales. Unlike other whales, this type could not really recover even after the end of whaling. During the last decades it has not become more common, the reasons for this are largely unknown. The East Atlantic stocks that have migrated earlier between Iceland and France, have disappeared; occasionally emerging right whales are probably only stray individual animals from the western Atlantic.
Taxonomy
The Atlantic right whales is sometimes done with the bowhead whale, the Pacific whale and southern right whales together in the genus Balaena or Eubalaena. Sooner Southern Right Whale, Atlantic and Pacific right whales were regarded as a kind, DNA studies have shown that it is three different ways.