Whale Searching from the Sky at Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary

Northern right whales are the very rarest of all the great whales. That's why many people take great interest in monitoring the population of these endangered species. Female northern right whales migrate south to the coast of Georgia from much colder waters in the north Atlantic when it's time to have their calves.

Your expedition assignment is to ride along with volunteer pilots who fly out over Gray's reef National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of Georgia, looking for northern right whales. In particular, you look for the mothers who come here to give birth. Before you get on the plane, you'll want some background on these incredible sea mammals.

Right whales were called so because they were the "right", or most profitable, whale to hunt. They are relatively slow moving, yield a great amount of blubber and other desired resources, and they float to the surface when killed, making it easier for whalers to get them aboard or tow them.

Thus, their population was almost decimated by the turn of the century. When laws were made to restrict hunting them in 1935, only about one hundred were left in the north Atlantic (where there was once 100,000).

Now, sixty years later, there are still only about 300 of them. One reason the population is so small is that they don't have very many calves. They are also endangered by collisions with boats, getting tangled in fishing nets, and water pollution.

Your plane takes off from a small airfield near the Gray's reef NMS. The engine is loud and you need to use headphones to communicate with the pilot and hear the control tower. The pilot is a volunteer in the whale protection effort.

Together you are flying over glistening blue water, peering through the plane's windows for northern right whales. It's hard to see with the blinding sunlight reflecting off of the water. You're quite a distance up there, too. Suddenly, you see what looks like a v-shaped puff of white spray, and then another one. Looking more closely, you can definitely see the dark shapes of two northern right whales in the water below!

You point the whales out to the pilot, who gets on the radio and warns all the ships in the area to stay away from those coordinates so they don't run into the whales. The pilot won't fly too close to the whales, because you don't know how much loud noise and human contact might affect them. It's important not to interfere with their calving. You continue surveying the area until you run low on fuel, and the pilot brings the plane in for a landing.