Right whales got their name because whalers considered them the “right” whale to hunt. They were slow, stayed close to shore, and floated after being killed, making them the easiest and most profitable target in the ocean. The name stuck long after commercial whaling ended, and it now belongs to three separate species scattered across the globe.
What Made Them the “Right” Catch
Several traits made right whales uniquely vulnerable to early whalers, who hunted from small rowboats launched off the coast or from sailing ships. The most important was buoyancy: a dead right whale floats. Most other large whales sink when killed, which meant whalers either lost their catch entirely or had to work frantically to secure it before it disappeared beneath the surface. A right whale could be harpooned, killed, and towed back to shore or to a ship at the crew’s pace.
Their swimming speed made the job even easier. Right whales are among the slowest large whales in the ocean. Research tracking North Atlantic right whales off Florida found a median speed of just 1.3 kilometers per hour, roughly 0.7 knots. Nearly 80% of recorded movements were at speeds below 1 knot. For context, a crew rowing a whaleboat could easily exceed 4 knots. Mothers with calves were even more vulnerable, sometimes spending up to 9 hours nearly motionless at the surface while nursing or resting.
Right whales also tended to feed and calve in coastal waters rather than the open ocean, putting them within reach of shore-based whaling operations. Basque whalers in the Bay of Biscay were hunting them as early as the 11th century, long before the age of deep-ocean whaling voyages. When whalers later expanded across the Atlantic and into the Pacific, they found the same combination of traits in closely related species living in those waters.
The Profit in a Single Whale
Beyond being easy to catch, right whales were extraordinarily valuable per kill. Their thick blubber yielded large quantities of oil used for lighting, lubrication, and soap. A single North Pacific right whale produced an average of about 122 barrels of oil. Southern right whales were somewhat smaller but still yielded 40 to 80 barrels depending on sex and region, with females generally producing more.
Right whales also carried long, flexible plates of baleen in their mouths, used to filter tiny crustaceans from seawater. Before the invention of plastics, baleen (called “whalebone” in the trade) was one of the most valuable materials in the world. It was used in corset stays, umbrella ribs, buggy whips, and dozens of other products that needed a material both strong and flexible. A single North Pacific right whale yielded over 1,100 pounds of baleen. That combination of high oil output and premium baleen made right whales worth more per animal than nearly any other species, reinforcing their reputation as the “right” whale in every sense.
Three Species, One Common Name
There are three living species of right whale, each occupying a different ocean basin. The North Atlantic right whale lives along the eastern coast of North America. The North Pacific right whale inhabits waters from Alaska to Japan. The Southern right whale ranges across the oceans of the Southern Hemisphere. All three share the same body plan: a large, rotund whale with no dorsal fin, a broad back, and distinctive rough patches of thickened skin on the head called callosities.
Those callosities are one of the easiest ways to recognize a right whale. The skin itself is dark, but tiny crustaceans called whale lice colonize these rough patches and turn them white. The pattern of callosities is unique to each individual, like a fingerprint, and researchers use photographs of them to identify and track specific whales over time.
From “Right to Hunt” to Nearly Gone
The very traits that earned right whales their name nearly erased them from the planet. By the early 1890s, commercial whalers had driven North Atlantic right whales to the brink of extinction. International protection came in 1935, but the population had already been reduced to a tiny fraction of its historical size. North Pacific right whales fared even worse and remain one of the rarest large whale populations on Earth.
Southern right whales have recovered more successfully, with populations growing in waters off South America, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. The North Atlantic population, however, remains critically small. Approximately 380 individuals survive today, including only about 70 reproductively active females. Vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear are now the primary threats, a grim irony for a species whose closeness to shore and slow pace once made it the perfect target for hunters and now puts it directly in the path of modern shipping and fishing.