ASSOCIATED PRESS • March 28, 2020
Warming ocean temperatures are causing some species of whales pursuing food to stray more frequently into shipping lanes, scientists say. The phenomenon already has increased ship strikes involving rare North Atlantic right whales on the East Coast. For the right whales, which number only about 400 and have lost more than 10 percent of their population in just a few years, the death toll is driving them closer to extinction, said Nick Record, senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay, Maine.