Right whales are usually not wary of boats and may often be approached very closely.
Like sperm and humpback whales, they usually throw their flukes high into the air when beginning a long dive.
Right whales feed primarily on copepods.
Historically, this whale was nearly exterminated by hunters, who took advantage of its slow speed and who knew that its carcass floats, to harvest these animals for their great yield of whalebone and oil. It was these characteristics which prompted whalers to dub these animals the "right" whales to kill (as opposed to the ones that were too fast to catch and sank when killed).
May Be Confused With
The distinct blow of the right whales and their smooth dark back, devoid of any traces of a dorsal fin, make it unlikely that the species will be confused with any other large whales except, perhaps, the bowhead whale. In the event that the expansion of their ranges again causes these two species to overlap in distribution, they can be distinguished from one another by the characteristics discussed on p. [49].
If only the flukes are seen as the animal begins a dive, right and bowhead whales may be distinguished from the other two species of large whales exhibiting this behavior, the sperm and the humpback, in this way: the flukes of right and bowhead whales are broad, pointed on the tips, greatly concave towards a deep fluke notch, and dark below: those of the sperm whale are more nearly triangular, while those of the humpback whale have a jagged irregular or rippled rear margin and are sometimes variously white below.
Distribution
Like its more northern relative, the bowhead whale, the right whale was once the object of a widespread and extensive whale fishery, which reduced the species to critically low numbers.
Though the former range of right whales is not clearly known, the species is thought to have been abundant from the Davis Straits south at least to the Carolinas and Bermuda and to have occurred in winter to Florida and perhaps into the Gulf of Mexico.