University South Carolina Prof Warns Right Whales Could Become Extinct

Warming oceans are driving some marine populations out of their habitats and into peril, according to new research by University of South Carolina professor Erin Meyer-Gutbrod. The temperature change is affecting creatures large and small, from the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale to more common fish whose habitats are losing oxygen.

Meyer-Gutbrod’s findings paint a grim picture for the right whale—a northward shift in the Gulf Stream warmed the Gulf of Maine from below, causing a decline in the zooplankton that right whales eat. “Failure to adopt such measures and significantly reduce anthropogenic mortality sources could commit the right whale population to extinction before the end of the century,” she says.