Kourtney Zimmerman
The Rice's Whale
The good news is that a new species of whale has been discovered in the United States’ southern waters. Everything else is bad news.
You might reasonably ask how a new type of whale gets “discovered” at this point in time, especially in such a heavily-observed area as the Gulf. Whales are famously big; surely, we’ve seen them all? Rice’s whale was discovered hiding, as it were, within another species.
Until 2021, Rice’s whales were considered specimens of Bryde’s whale, a species whose broad range includes seasonal sojourns in the Gulf. (Unpleasantly, “Bryde’s” is pronounced “broodus”; even worse, the name commemorates a Norwegian whaler who established the first whaling stations in South Africa.) After examining skulls of several types of whales, in 2003 scientists decided to split Bryde’s whales into two subspecies: what became Rice’s whale, and Omura’s whale—a related species which had been separated from Bryde’s whale. (Dale Rice and Hideo Omura were marine biologists—much more appropriate figures to name whales after.) Then in 2021, differences in the shape and features of the skull, backed up by archival genetic data, indicated a that Rice’s whale was different enough to be its own species, and Balaenoptera ricei was “born.”
Because Rice’s whale has only recently been identified and is relatively rare, some information about the animal has to be inferred from its former taxonomic roommate, Bryde’s whale. They are one of the rorquals, a subgroup of baleen whales with special adaptations in the jaw and throat to optimize gulp-feeding. To eat, these whales take in a big gulp of seawater, then force it out through their sieve-like baleen, retaining a mouthful of plankton and small animals to swallow. (Baleen is the “whalebone” used in old-fashioned corsetry, though it’s made not of bone but of keratin, like fingernails.) And they sing: these whales are among those who communicate over long distances through echoing calls that remind human observers of song.
Before Rice’s whale was even identified as a separate species, it was endangered. Scientists observing whale populations in the Gulf petitioned the National Marine Fisheries Service to recognize as endangered what was then considered the northern Gulf population of Bryde’s whales in 2014. The bureaucratic wheels clanked, and the “subspecies” was recognized as endangered in 2019, preserving this designation upon its graduation to full species in 2021.
For Rice’s whale to survive, it would need robust protection and support: the United States Marine Mammal Commission identified a range of factors needed to support the whale’s population, including abundance of prey (they are inconveniently choosy eaters), sufficiently quiet waters for the whales to communicate, ideal temperatures, and limited pollutants.
And indeed, this whale is in trouble. Estimates of the number of individuals left vary, but none of them crack a hundred whales. For Rice’s whale to survive, it would need robust protection and support: the United States Marine Mammal Commission identified a range of factors needed to support the whale’s population, including abundance of prey (they are inconveniently choosy eaters), sufficiently quiet waters for the whales to communicate, ideal temperatures, and limited pollutants. This last point is important: the Deepwater Horizon spill may have counted a fifth of the Rice’s whales then living among its colossal death toll. And emblematically, the dead whale whose dissection made identification of the whale as a separate species possible seems to have died after consuming a sharp piece of plastic that led to internal bleeding. These environmental factors are theoretically to be prioritized when the whale’s critical habitat is designated in July 2025, but it is difficult to imagine such concerns remaining on the agenda of state or federal governments under the current circumstances. When I contacted a friend who works for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to ask about interviewing a researcher for this article, he candidly informed me that he didn’t think there would be much point in the attempt, given the chaos present within the agency at the time of writing. (In fairness, the previous federal administration also failed to give serious support to efforts to protect Rice’s whale.)
To date, the only real actions taken to prevent or even postpone the extinction of Rice’s whale have been to find it, name it, and add it to various lists of endangered species: birth certificate and epitaph in one slim file. The Natural Resources Defense Council, a conservation nonprofit, notes that the end of the Rice’s whale will be the first human-caused extinction of a large whale species if and when the whale’s faltering numbers are allowed to drop to zero. An advocacy group, Our Gulf Whale, gathers and presents information about Rice’s whale, along with creative works inspired by the animal. There is no mention of ongoing fundraising or lobbying, but they do present a link to a recording of the Rice’s whale’s call. Without quick and, frankly, improbable changes, this call will soon live only on servers. ourgulfwhale.org.
