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A year of reporting on right whales ends where it began – with the people trying to save them. We wrap up The Globe’s Entangled series today.
Now, let’s catch you up on other news.
Noteworthy reporting this week:
- Oil and gas: Toughest days for new pipeline still ahead, new cabinet minister Marc Miller said
- Food: Why coffee prices are soaring – even more than other groceries
- Decarbonization: Alberta-Ottawa energy deal could unlock billions in low-carbon investment, report says
- Public opinion: More than half of Canadians support new pipeline from Alberta to B.C., Nanos poll finds
- Politics: Carney tells AFN chiefs Indigenous partnership must be part of major projects push
A deeper dive
Callosity Back (#3760), a first first-time mother this season, swims with her calf off South Carolina on Dec. 4. The 19-year-old North Atlantic right whale has survived three entanglements. She is the only right whale with callosity patches – the rough skin markings typically found on the head – on her back.CLEARWATER MARINE AQUARIUM RESEARCH INSTITUTE, NOAA PERMIT #26919, Funded by the United States Army Corps of Engineers.
A whale of a year
Jenn Thornhill Verma is a Pulitzer Ocean Reporting Network fellow for The Globe. For this week’s deeper dive, she reflects on wrapping Entangled, The Globe’s year-long series examining Canada-U.S. measures to protect North Atlantic right whales.
Most news coverage of North Atlantic right whales features the latest entanglement, vessel strike or death. We took a different approach, examining the solutions across the entirety of the whale’s range on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border. What we found is that right whales are dying from known problems with known solutions.
The mothers – 72 in a population of 384 – became our protagonists, shouldering the weight of an endangered species on their broad backs.
They included:
- Nauset (#2413), a seasoned mother nursing her fifth calf (a rare success story);
- Accordion (#4150), a first-time mother bearing propeller scars from a vessel strike 15 years ago, navigating the Eastern seaboard’s busiest shipping corridors with her calf;
- Calvin (#2223), presumed dead for three years, who resurfaced this spring;
- Harmonia (#3101), the whale that taught researchers that mothers and calves whisper to one another, amid the din of ocean noise pollution.
Their stories illustrate both crisis and resilience. The whales are dying mostly from fishing gear entanglements and vessel strikes, but climate-driven habitat shifts are pushing them into unprotected waters, and ocean noise pollution – as we explored last month on The Decibel podcast – is disrupting their communication and raising their stress levels.
The solutions are known: Remove vertical fishing lines, reroute or slow vessels and follow the whales – through aerial surveys, vessel monitoring and passive acoustic devices – so protections can meet them wherever they go.
Public will isn’t the problem. A 2024 Ipsos poll found 86 per cent of U.S. voters believe right whales should be protected. In Canada, 96 per cent said the same in a 2019 Abacus Data survey — despite 68 per cent knowing nothing about them.
The gap between knowing and doing became the through line of our reporting.
Over 14 months, The Globe drew on nearly 50 interviews with scientists, policy-makers, fishers and advocates, more than 60 scientific studies, government reports and data sets, and records tracking 32 individual whales to examine the threats and the policies that could address them. The series includes more than two dozen data visualizations, including an interactive policy timeline, and many more photos and videos.
This week, our "Cut the Cord” story on ropeless fishing gear was among more than 40 stories – selected from more than 800 – featured in the Pulitzer Center’s 2025 “A Year in Stories.”
Now, as the series closes, we return to where we began: the people working to change the outcome. Our final story profiles six changemakers – scientists, educators, rescue organizers – who have dedicated their lives to protecting right whales. They share what they believe it will take to close the implementation gap.
If right whales have taught us anything, it’s that they will continue to surprise us. Last month, a whale first photographed off Ireland in July 2024 turned up off Boston, nearly 5,000 kilometres across the Atlantic, a month ahead of the usual season.
Of the three new mother-calf pairs spotted this season, one include a first-time mother – defying the odds once more. The whales keep doing their part. The question is whether we’ll do ours.
— Jenn
What else you missed
- Ottawa’s net-zero advisory co-chair resigns, citing disappointment with climate priorities
- Winter storm descends on Atlantic Canada bringing heavy snow, winds
Opinion and analysis
The moment of truth has dawned for the electric vehicle industry
It needs to prove it is a viable, sustainable business that can survive and thrive without being propped up in an artificial environment of subsidies and incentives. Simply put, it needs to grow up – and quickly.
— Gus Carlson, a U.S.-based columnist for The Globe and Mail
Alberta-Ottawa MOU is a climate breakthrough, despite Steven Guilbeault’s misplaced outrage
Canada’s progress on emissions reduction was stuck in a ditch, and the Ottawa-Alberta ‘grand bargain’ just put it back on the road.
— Michael Bernstein, president and chief executive of Clean Prosperity
Green Investing
Agnico, Inuit-owned Nukik enter agreement to push hydro-fibre link to Canada’s North
Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. has joined an Inuit-led effort to build a $3.2-billion electricity and broadband link to Nunavut from Manitoba, as it seeks a new source of clean power for its gold-mining operation in the territory.
Agnico Eagle, the world’s second-largest gold producer, and Nukik Corp. said on Monday that they had signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on the technical aspects of the proposed Kivalliq Hydro-Fibre Link and formalize commercial discussions.
Photo of the week
Haze caused by pollution blankets the sky over the Yamuna River on Dec. 3 in New Delhi. The Indian capital's air quality index reached 376 – classified as “very poor” to “severe” – with fine particulate matter levels recorded at more than 20 times the World Health Organization's safe limits. Health experts have declared conditions “extreme and life-threatening,” as 30 million residents contend with persistent headaches, eye irritation and respiratory distress.Anindito Mukherjee/Getty Images
Guides and Explainers
- Want to learn to invest sustainably? We have a class for that: Green Investing 101 newsletter course for the climate-conscious investor. Not sure you need help? Take our quiz to challenge your knowledge.
- We’ve rounded up our reporters’ content to help you learn about what a carbon tax is, what happened at COP29 and just generally how Canada will change because of climate change.
- We have ways to make your travelling more sustainable and if you like to read, here are books to help the environmentalist in you grow, as well as a downloadable e-book of Micro Skills - Little Steps to Big Change.
Catch up on Globe Climate
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