The Essentials

Acoustic monitoring by Cornell scientists for endangered right whales off New York harbor is ending because the project has lost funding in the state’s current budget crunch, according to the Associated Press. Monitors have been recording the whales’ calls south of Long Island for a year.

“We ran out of money,” said Chris Clark, director of the Bioacoustics Research Program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “We had to stop the process for right now.”

Biologists estimate 300 to 400 North Atlantic right whales remain; they were fished to commercial extinction a century ago and today are vulnerable to ship collisions and entanglement in fishing gear.

Right whales can reach 50 feet and 70 tons, are often found in coastal waters and with about 40 percent blubber, tend to stay near the surface, which made them easy prey for whalers of old.