2010 Right Whale Prospectus

The number of right whale births depends on the number of reproductively active females, better known as cows, in the population.  However, right whales require two, or more likely three or more, years between births.  This means that we need to remove the 39 mothers from this year from the available pool of females.  We should also remove most of the mothers from last year, which I believe was pretty good, say 25.  The wild card in this guess is how many new females will be added to the pool.  Since it takes at least 5 years for a female to become sexually mature (average is 11, see Ch. 6 in the Urban Whale), the high birth years from the early part of this decade are only now starting to enter the population.  Let's say that we've added 20 new females since 2005, then we have 112 total cows.  Subtracting this year's births and my guesstimate of last year's gives us 48 available females.  This provides an upper limit on the number of births for next year.  How many will actually give birth will depend on a lot of factors, with my favorite being food.  If Calanus is abundant this year, then our earlier modeling work suggests that as many as 63% could calve, producing 30 new whales.  Realistically, I think 50% is a better guess, giving 24 calves.  While Seascape Labs would never condone the practice, opportunities for short selling in 2010 could be lucrative.