The southern right whale migrates through Southern Hemisphere waters. Its large, callosity-covered head and stocky body without a dorsal fin are distinctive.
Its stocky black body may have white patches on the belly and chin, and its large head is covered with callosities. It has no dorsal fin and has broad, paddle-shaped flippers.
It may leap partly or almost fully out of the water and slap the surface with its flukes or flippers. In austral summer it feeds in high-latitude Southern Ocean grounds and moves to lower-latitude breeding grounds in austral winter.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.