I had the chance to listen to a speaker sponsored by the Park Service on Ocracoke this spring.  I wrote an article, but lost it to some glitch.  This is a remnant that I found.

The couple had been responding to marine mammal strandings for the past 20 years, and spoke to the frequency of stranding of various species.  They closed with the right whales.  Right whales were named because they were the "right" whale, easy to hunt.  The theory is that there is a secondary calving location just offshore of Ocracoke.

Each of the approximately 400 right whales that remain can be identified by their unique markings.

http://www.rightwhaleweb.org/identification.html



http://seamap.env.duke.edu/