Monitoring of rare whales near NY harbor ends
(AP) -- Monitoring for endangered right whales off New York harbor is ending because the project has lost financing in the current budget crunch.
Acoustic monitoring by Cornell scientists shows the rare right whales swimming off the harbor, where federal officials have recently lowered ship speed limits to help protect the slow-moving mammals during migrations from Florida to New England and Canada.
Officials say monitors that have recorded the whales' calls south of Long Island for a year are not being replaced.
Biologists estimate 300 to 400 North Atlantic right whales remain, having been fished to commercial extinction a century ago and vulnerable now to ship collisions and entanglement in fishing gear.
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