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Endangered Whales Break Birth Record

AP
posted: 23 HOURS 58 MINUTES AGO
comments: 64
filed under: Animal News
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BOSTON (May 9) - Right whales have plenty to celebrate this Mother's Day — the sea moms gave birth to a record 39 calves this spring.
The New England Aquarium said Friday that the birth surge breaks the old record of 31 and shows much improvement from 2000, when only one calf was born.
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Each birthing season is important because right whales number fewer than 400 and are among the most endangered whales in the world.
Having a calf is no easy task for the 50-foot-long whales, who give birth off the Florida and Georgia coasts.
The moms travel nearly 1,000 miles down the East Coast to warmer waters for their babies, who weigh roughly 2,400 pounds at birth. And the moms can lose up to 30,000 pounds in the first year they are nursing.
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Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2009-05-09 18:54:21
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Kalliopea9

07:18 PMMay 10 2009

If Nature is bringing in new life, we must be on the right path. Lovely story.

AVG RATING:
(2)

Thaiorchidsource

06:33 PMMay 10 2009

Its a crying shame that those fishermen put an end to the life of that hammerhead shark. There are too damm few of these creaturs left.

AVG RATING:
(2)

Spitfi0017

04:09 PMMay 10 2009

Alphama333, Oh, whatever. Fish is not for us to eat and it is loaded with mercury nowdays, anyways. We can always eat something else and keep the ecosystem stable.

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(5)

Spitfi0017

04:08 PMMay 10 2009

AOL, delete this story! We don't want Japanese fishermans to hear there is more whales to heartlessly spear soon!

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(7)

HMS723

03:43 PMMay 10 2009

Happy Mother's Day to all the other mommies and mommies-to-be out there! We rule :).

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(7)

ThCrazyManWins

03:25 PMMay 10 2009

Its the jap's that are killing all the whales by over harvesting them for profit and thats a fact ! to see the whales make a good come back we need to stop ALL whaling in every country that sill pramits it like japan, russa, and any other country that still hunts whales! the jap's being the werst they even come to our waters to poach whales !

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(7)

Alphama333

01:07 PMMay 10 2009

Give 'em about 20 or 30 years and they'll no longer be on the endangered species act. Then, the goverment will issue a bounty on the whales due to too many of 'em in the waters and eating our fish supplies. They'll be back down to a few whales then. Just like those gray wolves in the pacific northwest.

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(9)

LSINCLAIR6915

12:55 PMMay 10 2009

What a bunch of ignorant people on here....the Right Whale is the issue here people.....not literacy, although some ought to open up the dictionary before engaging their fingers to type.

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(7)

Otterdad48

12:32 PMMay 10 2009

This is great news. Reproductive rates for great whales are generally low and if ever a species was on the brink of oblivion it was the right whales. Twenty five or so years ago I saw my first one from the beach at Ponce Inlet and we would occassionally spot them during the winter months when we were fishing between Daytona and Cape Canaveral. I hope the calves all grow up to increase the odds this species continued existence.

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ParkLf4

12:22 PMMay 10 2009

TrekkinBob wrote ---"What kind of knowledge would that be Larry? Obviously not any kind of knowledge of how to write English. At least not from your post which reads as if it were written by an illiterate ten year old"...............Park, some of these folks are really giving this science stuff a try and making a genuine effort to crawl out from under the rock. Sometimes its better to look for this than it is pounding away at the details of how they sound. KLarryTX is spot-on with this on -----------Your right of course. I guess my point was that it's little rich to come on the boards and berate people for ignorance when you haven't even bothered to learn how to write English. To be honest I think I misunderstood Larry's post, partly because it WAS so badly written.

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