Conservationists are sounding the alarm after six dead endangered North Atlantic right whales have been discovered off the coasts of northern New Brunswick and PEI in the just the past few weeks. Experts estimate only 500 of the large marine animals are still alive, so the dead whales represent a die off of more than one percent of the species entire population. The dead whales were discovered in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in a triangle of ocean between Northern PEI, New Brunswick’s Misocu Island and Quebec’s Magdalen Islands. What caused the death of the whales isn’t known but a spokesperson for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans tells CBC they are in the process of figuring out how to retrieve one of the giant carcasses to conduct a necropsy.