Shrinking giants: North Atlantic right whales getting tinier

“This isn’t about ‘short’ right whales, it’s about a physical manifestation of a physiological problem, it’s the chest pain before the heart attack,” said Regina Asmutis-Silvia, executive director of Whale and Dolphin Conservation North America

One of the giants of the deep is shrinking before our eyes, . The younger generation of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales are on average about three feet (one meter) shorter than whales were 20 years ago, drone and aircraft data show in a study in Thursday’s journal Current Biology. Scientists say humans are to blame. Entanglements with fishing gear, collisions with ships and climate change moving their food supply north are combining to stress and shrink these large whales, the study says.