Right Whale News

Calvin's Story inspires educational Project

Remember Calvin? Calvin is a right whale born in 1992. At age 8 months,
while Calvin was still nursing, her mother, Delilah, was killed by a
ship strike.  Delilah's death and public display helped stimulate
the eventually successful initiative to reroute shipping lanes in the
Bay of Fundy to reduce the risk of ship strikes. With the death of the
nursing mother, experts feared for Calvin's survival, but they were
wrong. Not only did Calvin survive, she returned to the Bay of Fundy
this past August with her first calf. Lobbying is under way to have the
calf names Hobbes!

Calvin's story became the focus of an educational program for
[elementary and] secondary school children developed by William McWeeny
and his students at the Adams School in Castine, Maine. The program
includes information on Calvin's life story, the plight of right whales
in general, and efforts being made to help the whales survive and
recover. When students Allison Fleck and Georgia Zildjian presented The
Calvin Project at the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium meeting in
New Bedford, the normally blase audience gave them and their fellow
students a standing ovation. The program will be turned into a
secondary school science curriculum unit about endangered species in
general with Calvin's story serving as a model. Rollout for the
completed curriculum is expected in 2007.