I sure hope the NOAA isn't going to dominate the investigation. They ignored my concerns April 17th, 2017 (and recently). The U.S. gov't is heavily invested (along with Bill Gates and others) in Wolbachia-infected Aedes male releases (which I believe is the root cause).

I wrote to Dominic LeBlanc in December 2016 and he responded in March that he "deeply shared my concerns" but passed my letter along to Jane Philpott (who has never responded).

I highly suspect two things causing the death of these whales (and other planktivorous-consuming mammals):

1) Zika, West Nile, or St. Louis encephalitis viruses (whales have suffered the latter two). Zika shares this phylogenetic clade with over 97 percent nodal support.

2) About 1/3 of Calanus finmarchicus is Aedes aegypti which has been unnaturally infected with Wolbachia for about five years.

My reference-based article (with 14 citations): http://www.infobarrel.com/Test_North_Atlantic_Right_Whales_for_WNV_SLEV_ZIKA_and_Wolbachia