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Whales of all shapes and sizes play a significant role in the health of marine ecosystems. About 50% of the air humans breathe is produced by the ocean, thanks to phytoplankton and whale waste. The is the foundation of the marine food web and the planet's lungs.

Packed with nutrients, whale waste is a super fertilizer that supports phytoplankton, which produces oxygen and is food for zooplankton, fish, and other marine species. The marine creatures phytoplankton support then provide food for shorebirds and humans.

These marine leviathans also help mitigate the human-made climate crisis. One whale can an average of 33 tons of carbon dioxide over its lifespan. A live oak tree, one of the most efficient carbon-capturing tree species, captures about 12 tons of carbon dioxide over a up to 500-year lifespan.

Humans, however, have long disrespected these marine mammals and the environment where they live.

Blue whales can weigh as much as 200 tons and measure up to 110 feet long depending on their environment—Antarctic blue whales are generally larger than other blue whale subspecies. However, after centuries of commercial whaling, blue whales of that size likely no longer exist.

On average they weigh 130–150 tons and are between 82 and 105 feet in length. They have a height of about 16 feet.

Blue whales are the largest animal to ever live on Earth. They feed almost exclusively on krill, straining huge volumes of seawater through their baleen plates, which hang from the roof of the mouth and work like a sieve. Some of the biggest individuals can eat up to 6 tons of krill a day.

The number of blue whales today is a tiny fraction of how many there were before modern commercial whaling significantly reduced their numbers during the early 1900s. Scientists have estimated that nearly 3 million whales were killed for commercial purposes in the 20th century, including 90% of blue whales.

Although blue whales received international legal protection from commercial whaling in 1966 under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, population recovery has been slow.

Blue whales are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act and classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species.

The primary threats to blue whales now are still humans, but in a different form—vessel strikes and entanglements in fishing gear. Another significant threat to their survival is the declining availability of krill due to climate change and ocean acidification.

Like all large whales, fin whales, the second-largest whale species, were also hunted by commercial whalers. They weren't initially targeted because they are fast swimmers who prefer deep water. But, as whaling methods modernized with steam-powered ships and explosive harpoons and whalers decimated easier to find and kill whales, commercial whaling eventually turned its attention to fin whales. The industry killed a significant number during the mid-1900s—nearly 725,000 in the Southern Hemisphere alone.

Today, fin whales are probably the most vulnerable species to vessel strikes after North Atlantic right whales.

The North Atlantic right whale is listed as endangered under both federal and state endangered species acts. From the early 1500s to the 1920s, these whales were extensively hunted in the western North Atlantic. A full prohibition on hunting began in 1935.

There are about 370 North Atlantic right whales left in the world now.

"[Their numbers] have gone up a little bit, so they may be getting used to the changes in their food supply," said Robert Kenney, a University of Rhode Island emeritus marine research scientist who has spent the past 47 years focused on the ecology and conservation biology of marine vertebrates, including whales. "One of the things you can look at for right whales is what is the temperature of the water that's coming into the bottom of the Gulf of Maine each year. It got too warm for a while in the last couple of years, but it's cooled off again so their food may be coming back in the fall. And there were actually right whales in the Bay of Fundy for the first time in several years."

Kenney noted ocean temperatures impact where and how plentiful what North Atlantic right whales eat can be found. Copepods are the species' primary prey. These planktonic crustaceans typically occur in large numbers across the North Atlantic Ocean. Right whales swim slowly through aggregations of Calanus finmarchicus, straining large numbers from the water.

"They don't care how warm it gets, because they can always, if they get too hot, go down below the thermocline, where the water is always cold," he said. "They can adapt to temperature changes, so it's where their prey are. The stuff that they feed on, little things about the size of rice, are a cold-water species."

North Atlantic right whales, along with Rice's whales, are the species in the greatest need of protection, according to Kenney.

"The North Atlantic right whale is one to really worry about right now," he said. "Blue whales are slowly coming back. Fin whales are probably doing fine. Sei whales, we never really had enough information to go on, but they're probably doing fine. Now we have the Rice's whale that's also critically endangered, because there's only probably fewer than 50 of those, because it's a little relic population in the Gulf of Mexico."

The following is a look at the whales in southern New England listed as a species of concern, threatened or endangered:

: Listed as endangered in Massachusetts. Populations occur in all oceans, but their distribution varies seasonally. The populations in the North Atlantic, North Pacific, and Southern Hemisphere don't mix. Although the winter distribution of these whales in the North Atlantic isn't well known, their range extends from the subtropics to the Greenland Sea. They are most frequently sighted off the coast of eastern Canada throughout the summer and fall and there are rare sightings off Cape Cod, which is considered to be at the southern edge of their feeding range.

Sightings are characteristically rare in New England. However, they can be seen off the coast of Cape Cod and in the Gulf of Maine. They may feed off the coast of Cape Cod throughout the summer and fall.

The diet of this whale consists mainly of krill. While the whales may also eat fish and copepods, they aren't a significant part of their diet. Like other baleen whales, females are somewhat larger than males.

Between 10,000 and 25,000 remain.

: Listed as endangered in Massachusetts. They prefer deep, offshore waters of all the major oceans, primarily in temperate and polar latitudes. The species can be found in Massachusetts throughout the year, where they can be observed about 12 miles off any part of the Bay State coastline. They are common east of Cape Cod in the Great South Channel and in deeper waters east of Boston and Cape Ann. Although there are seasonal fluctuations, this whale is most common in New England from April to November.

Due to their complex migratory patterns, deep ocean habitat, and ability to travel at high speeds, this species is difficult to study. This whale feeds primarily on fish such as sand lance and herring, which they capture by engulfing and filtering mouthfuls of water. Other components of their diet include krill and squid. They apparently fast throughout the winter. They are found in social groups of two to seven individuals.

They produce unique sounds at 20 hertz that may carry up to 500 miles underwater. These sounds are well below the threshold of human hearing and their purpose remains unknown. The sounds may be used for communication or long-range acoustic imaging to identify oceanographic features.

About 70,000 remain.

: Listed as endangered in Massachusetts. This whale is found worldwide but is less common in Arctic waters. The species is divided into three reproductively and geographically isolated populations: North Atlantic, North Pacific, and Southern Ocean.

They can be found feeding in the region from spring through fall. Common feeding grounds for these whales include Jeffery's Ledge, Stellwagon Bank, and waters off the coasts of Maine, New Hampshire, Cape Ann, and Cape Cod from April through October. During the winter, these whales can be found in more shallow waters, where they mate and give birth, along the Antillean Chain in the West Indies and on the Silver and Navidad banks, north of the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.

Humpback behavior includes spyhopping (poking their heads out of the water so their eyes are above the surface and they can see what's going on around them), logging (resting or sleeping just below the surface of water), flipper slapping (slapping long pectoral fins against the surface of the water), and breaching (jumping out of the water).

They feed on schooling fish and other small marine animals, which include sand lance, herring, capelin, and krill. They use various methods when catching their prey, including bubble feeding, lunge feeding, and stunning. These methods are carried out by either individuals or as groups acting together.

About 10,000 humpback whales remain.

: Listed as endangered in Massachusetts. They usually occur from the Bay of Fundy south to northern Florida, but individual whales may disperse beyond these limits.They concentrate in Cape Cod Bay and the Great South Channel east of Nantucket Island in small numbers from December to March, and in larger numbers in April and May. These areas are important feeding grounds because of the unusually dense concentrations of zooplankton.

Few of these whales remain in Massachusetts waters throughout the summer; most of the population spends summer and fall in the Bay of Fundy and on the Nova Scotian shelf. They move south to warmer waters off the coast of Georgia and Florida to calve. They primarily inhabit coastal and shelf waters.

These whales sometimes feed by skimming prey from the surface of the water as they swim through a patch of plankton with their mouths open. They then use their tongues to force the water through their baleens, the comb-like fibrous plates hanging from the upper jaw, while retaining the zooplankton in their mouth.

Parasitic amphipods called whale lice heavily infest the callosities of this whale species, sometimes giving their heads a yellowish-white patchy appearance.

About 370 remain.

: Listed as endangered in Massachusetts. This whale can be found in all the world's oceans, except tropical and extreme polar seas. The species prefers subtropical and subpolar waters, and in the Western Atlantic, ranges from Greenland and Iceland south to the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. New England waters are probably on the southern edge of the northern feeding range of the species. These whales migrate during the summer north to the Gulf of Maine and Canadian waters.

Sightings in coastal New England are uncommon in the spring and fall of some years, but this whale is frequently observed in the deeper waters of the Gulf of Maine. The species is considered to be relatively abundant in the North Atlantic.

These whales have few predators that are capable of killing them. These include orcas and larger sharks. Sea lampreys or parasitic copepods may be the cause of small white scars seen on many of these whales.

There are about 80,000 sei whales left.

: Listed as endangered in Massachusetts. They can be found in all the oceans of the world, but primarily in the higher latitudes. They generally inhabit water more than 3,200 feet deep and are uncommon in shallow waters. Young whales live in tropical and subtropical waters, until they migrate toward the poles sometime between the ages of 4 and 21.

Live adult sperm whale sightings are rare in Massachusetts waters and in the Gulf of Maine. They usually remain in deeper water off the continental shelf. The few live ones seen in New England have usually been young calves, but two large adult males have washed up on Nantucket in the past three decades. The first was a 47-foot animal that stranded alive on Low Beach, Siasconset, on Dec. 30, 1997. Its skeleton is now on display in the Nantucket Whaling Museum. The second was a 46-foot, 45-ton whale that washed up on June 7, 2002, at Great Point. The skeleton of this animal is on display in the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

This species is the largest of the toothed whales. Their diet consists mainly of large squids, sharks, skates, and other fish. The average dive for a sperm whale when capturing food lasts about 35 minutes, but they may dive for up to an hour.

There are about 300,000 sperm whales left.

Note: Some of the species listed in each state overlap, and how often the lists are updated varies—the list was last updated in March 2006, last August, and in January 2023. For species listed as state historical—essentially extirpated—in Rhode Island, they were included in the endangered category.