Only 50 Rice’s Whales Are Left. Can We Do Enough to Protect Them Before It’s Too Late?
In 2021, researchers identified a new whale species and are now scrambling to save their natural habitat
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Imagine a species with fewer individuals than seats on a school bus. Now imagine that each weighs more than the bus itself. That’s Rice’s whale, the only resident baleen whale in the Gulf of Mexico—and one of the most endangered whales in the world. Scientists estimate that about 50 are left.
These whales were thought to belong to a more abundant species, Bryde’s whale, until 2014, when DNA taken from skin samples showed that they were unique. But biologists needed to confirm the new species by comparing its skulls and skeletons with those of other known relatives.
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In 2019, a male stranded in the Everglades. Salvaging its skeleton enabled scientists to define it as a new species in 2021, which led to an update of the Endangered Species Act listing. The whale was named in honor of Dale W. Rice, the first scientist credited with writing about what he thought was a Bryde’s subpopulation in 1965.
Scientists are still learning about its distinctive characteristics, including vocalizations such as a longer moan than any Bryde’s whale call. And while Bryde’s whales forage a variety of prey near the surface, Rice’s whales are deep divers and picky eaters, hunting calorie-dense fish in a narrow band of the gulf.
Today, the National Museum of Natural History displays a piece of the stranded whale’s baleen—the bristle-lined mouth plates they use to capture food. It also exhibits its likely cause of death: a sharp piece of plastic it swallowed that caused stomach bleeding, leading to emaciation.
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James D. Tiller and Fred Cochard / Smithsonian
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But plastic pollution isn’t the worst threat facing Rice’s whales. Their home is a minefield of speeding ships, ear-splitting seismic blasts from oil and gas prospecting that drown out the calls they use to communicate, and oil spills: The 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster is thought to have killed a fifth of all Rice’s whales. “At the moment, we haven’t done anything to protect this species,” says Jeremy Kiszka, a biologist at Florida International University.
Two steps forward in the whales’ protection are slated for 2025. On May 21, federal officials intend to replace a flawed 2020 assessment of threats to the whale, which dismissed the known risks of future oil spills, to ensure that oil and gas drilling doesn’t cause the whales further harm. And on July 15, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is set to finalize the legal designation of its critical habitat, which will oblige the federal government not to fund or authorize activities that cause habitat destruction.
“This is a true test,” says Matthew Leslie, a biologist at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania who has worked on the genetics of both whale species. “We say we love whales. We like to watch David Attenborough films about whales. But can we actually put our money where our mouth is and take care of them?”
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This article is a selection from the March 2025 issue of Smithsonian magazine