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Why isn't the population of Northern Right Whales increasing despite decades of protection?

Dr. Rosenbaum and his colleagues at the American Museum of Natural History are concerned about the lack of genetic variation among living Right Whales. They are worried that overhunting in the 19th century may have destroyed the genetic diversity the whales need to return to their former levels of growth.

The problem is determining the genetic diversity that existed in the whale population over 100 years ago.

We contacted Dr. Rosenbaum and offered our assistance.

To help him test his hypothesis in February, 2001, UI Department of Geoscience Ph. D. candidate and Museum staff-member Richard Slaughter took a sample of bone from our historic Right Whale skeleton hanging in Mammal Hall.

Rosenbaum will extract portions of the DNA still in the bone and then usea procedure called PCR, polymerase chain reaction, to produce enough copies (a process called amplification) so that he can then determine the genetic sequence of the sample. A comparison with the living population will then be made. We will report the results here when they become available. How we got our whale.