What is the primary food of the North Atlantic right whale?

The primary food of the North Atlantic right whale is copepods. These tiny crustaceans form the dense zooplankton patches that sustain this baleen whale.

North Atlantic right whales are filter feeders. They swim slowly through concentrated prey with their mouths open, allowing seawater and food to pass through long baleen plates. The baleen traps copepods while water flows back out. A whale must find exceptionally dense patches because each individual copepod is extremely small.

Krill, pteropods and larval barnacles can also appear in the diet, but they are secondary choices in comparison with copepods. This is why “krill” can seem plausible yet is not the best answer. Their feeding grounds depend heavily on ocean currents and seasonal plankton blooms.

The species’ name is unrelated to its diet: “right whale” comes from historic whalers’ belief that these slow, surface-floating whales were the right whales to hunt. Today, entanglement in fishing gear and ship strikes are among their most serious threats.