Right whales are the most endangered of all the world's whales. They were hunted relentlessly in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Brief Description:

• Typical full-grown length: up to 16 meters (about 52 feet)

• Color: from dark to light gray and sometimes mottled, often with irregular white patches

• Head: "Calosities" (the largest of which is called the bonnet and is set on top of the snout) are present on its head and lower jaw, and covered with cyamid crustaceans ("whale lice")

• Dorsal (back): smooth and finless

• Tail movement: all dark in color and raised on longer dives

• Other distinguishing characteristics: upper jaw arched and lower lip strongly bowed; there are two clearly separated blow holes; baleen ("teethlike") is usually dark gray with dark fringes to 2.2 meters long

• Habitat: previously, it was found from the southern Bering Sea to southern Oregon, with stragglers to California, Baja California, and Hawaii; its current distribution is unknown but thought to be severely restricted