Bishop vanished. His species can still be saved.

Bishop’s story, from birth to presumed death, shows the extreme danger facing right whales, which could be extinct in three decades if they continue to disappear at the present rate. Bishop’s species is not doomed to extinction, advocates say, but time is running out.

In most ways, Bishop was a normal right whale. For the first year of his life, his mother nursed and protected him, and he learned to feed by swimming, mouth agape, through patches of plankton floating near the surface.

But on Jan. 20, 2015, Bishop became something more: a precious source of data that would help scientists better understand the dangers afflicting his species.

That day, off the coast of New Smyrna Beach, Fla., scientists tagged Bishop with a satellite transmitter. For the next 50 days, he broadcast his location as he migrated over 1,000 miles up the East Coast. It was one of the longest transmissions of a North Atlantic right whale ever recorded.

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Scientists approached Bishop by boat and used a crossbow to attach the orange tag to his blubber. He showed no reaction as he slowly swam south.

Bishop shortly after being tagged (Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, taken under NOAA Permit #15488)

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He soon took a U-turn and embarked upon his winter migration north. Along the way, he passed hundreds of speeding vessels, including fishing boats, transport ships, and leisure craft. Here, we see only those vessels that have enabled their location transponders.

These are boats.

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Near Savannah, Ga., Bishop swam into a speed-restricted area created in 2008 to protect right whales. Inside, most vessels 65 feet and longer must follow a 10 knot, or 11.5 mile per hour, speed limit. Smaller vessels still whizzed by even faster.

Pink boats are moving faster than 10 knots.

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Bishop moved up the East Coast, lingering for a week in an area without speed limits. Although right whales dive for minutes at a time, they tend to spend more time near the surface than other whale species.

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Bishop averaged about 50 miles per day for the rest of his northward journey. By March, he had joined other right whales to search for food south of Nantucket, Mass. On March 11, his tag fell off, ending the transmisison.

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For much of his migration, Bishop swam through waters where the lack of speed limits makes vessel strikes more likely.

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In 2022, the Biden administration proposed expanding that area and applying speed limits to smaller vessels, as well.

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The proposed expanded boundaries have been embraced by scientists and advocates, who say it could help save North Atlantic right whales from extinction. But NOAA Fisheries, the agency behind the proposal, has yet to finalize the rule, which is still being reviewed by the White House.

The delay has frustrated whale advocates, who say more urgency is required. “As we watch this species go extinct one by one, the solution sits idle in the hands of the administration,” said Kathleen Collins, a senior marine campaign manager at the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

As a 1-year-old, Bishop managed to weave through vessel-filled waters unscathed. Other right whales aren’t as lucky.

So far this year, a dead female turned up off Virginia with a dislocated spine, a calf was discovered in Georgia with head lacerations, and a young female was found — again in Georgia — with a fractured skull. All the injuries are consistent with vessel strikes.

“It’s only humans that kill right whales,” said Philip Hamilton, a senior scientist in the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium. “We don’t give them the opportunity to die of old age.”

For North Atlantic right whales, living near humans has been disastrous. By 1935, they had been hunted nearly to extinction, with fewer than 100 left alive. Salvation came in the form of an international ban on right whale hunting, after which their population steadily rebounded.

Then, about a decade ago, the happy trend suddenly reversed. Their numbers are now falling at a rate of about 10 per year.

Estimated North Atlantic right whale population

Hover on the chart to explore the data

Note: Area above and below the line shows 95% confidence interval.

The decline may be fueled in part by climate change. As ocean water has warmed, right whales have followed their prey northward into areas without speed limits in place. Meanwhile, recreational boats have grown faster and more numerous.

The expanded speed limits proposed by the Biden administration have faced fierce opposition from recreational boaters and fishers who say the rule is economically costly and unnecessary, arguing larger vessels are a greater threat to whales.

“It’s a false choice to state that Americans must choose between saving whales and allowing public access” to the sea, Frank Hugelmeyer, head of the National Marine Manufacturers Association, told Congress last year.

In addition to vessel strikes, right whales are also threatened by entanglement in fishing gear stretched deep into the sea to trap lobsters and crabs. Bishop’s family tree underscores the danger.

Bishop’s mother, Insignia, endured four entanglements over the course of her life. She was last sighted in 2015 and is presumed dead. She was the mother of four known calves. Here she is off the coast of Georgia in 2014, swimming alongside Bishop as a calf.

Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute, taken under NOAA permit #15488

Bishop’s grandmother Slalom is still alive after surviving six entanglements. She is the mother of six known calves, including Bishop’s mother. Here she is in 2021.

NOAA Fisheries, taken under NOAA permit #21371

Bishop’s great-grandmother Wart was the matriarch of a family of 31 known whales and counting. Her prodigious family tree highlights how the untimely death of just one female can reduce the species’ future population. Here is Wart in the Gulf of Maine in 2010, with fishing line going through her mouth and over her head. She was last sighted in 2014 and is presumed dead.

Center for Coastal Studies, taken under NOAA permit #932-1905

Bishop got his name from a scar across his head reminiscent of the slit in the chess piece — a mark that probably came from a run-in with fishing rope, according to Amy Knowlton, who also works on right whales at the New England Aquarium.

Bishop was last seen in 2017. The vast majority of whales that go two years without a sighting are never seen again. After six years without a sighting, a whale is officially presumed dead in the North Atlantic Right Whale Catalog. If Bishop is dead, his body has not been found, so the cause of death remains a mystery.

To cut down on entanglements, engineers have made remote-controlled fishing gear that doesn’t require any rope. But deploying that “ropeless” gear is proving to be a bigger challenge than developing it. Lobster harvesters don’t want to pay for expensive equipment with which they are less familiar.

A bipartisan group of Maine lawmakers recently inserted a provision in a federal funding bill making it harder for regulators to issue any new rope regulations until 2029.

To Knowlton, the provision was further evidence of the government’s inability to protect whales like Bishop. “It’s unfathomable to me,” she said, “that Congress has had that much control over a critically endangered species.”