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The New York Times website Viewed 3/17/09 /2009/03/17/science/17whal.html?_r=1pagewanted=all The Fall and Rise of the Right Whale By CORNELIA DEAN Published: March 16, 2009 Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration SUNNIER DAYS A North Atlantic right whale and calf off Florida. The whale remains endangered, but its population has more than tripled in a century. ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. — The biologists had been in the plane for hours, flying back and forth over the calm ocean. They had seen dolphins, leatherback turtles, a flock of water birds called gannets and even a basking shark — but not what they were looking for. Steering Clear Audio Slide Show/interactive/2009/03/17/sciencewhale-audioss/index.html A Slow Comeback for the Right Whale MULTIMEDIA Right Whales A video of right whales during mating season in September 2005 is available at the URL for this article. Then Millie Brower, who was peering with intense concentration through a bubblelike window fitted into the plane’s fuselage, announced “nine o’clock, about a mile off.” The plane made a stomach-churning lurch as the pilots banked left and began to circle. And there, below, were a right whale mother and her new calf, barely breaking the surface, lolling in the swells. The researchers, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Georgia Wildlife Trust, are part of an intense effort to monitor North Atlantic right whales, one of the most endangered, and closely watched, species on earth. As a database check eventually disclosed, the whale was Diablo, who was born in these waters eight years ago. Her calf — at a guess 2 weeks old and a bouncing 12 feet and 2 tons — was the 38th born this year, a record that would be surpassed just weeks later, with a report from NOAA on the birth of a 39th calf. The previous record was 31, set in 2001. “It’s a bumper year for calves,” Richard Merrick, an oceanographer for NOAA’s f