Bowhead Whale

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Bowhead Whales (Balaena mysticetus), often called the Greenland Right Whale, is the sole representative of its genus in the right whale family (Balaenidae).

Five different stocks of bowhead whales, the great whales of the circumpolar northern oceans, live along the northeast and northwest areas of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

The numbers on the map at the top of the page correspond with the numbers on the list and move in a semi-counterclockwise motion around the map.

1. Hudson Bay-Foxe Basin (Canada)
2. Davis Strait-Baffin Bay (Denmark (Greenland) and Canada)
3. Svalbard-Barents Sea (Spitsbergen) (Denmark (Greenland), Norway, and Russian Federation)
4. Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort Seas (US (Alaska), Canada, and Russian Federation)
5. Okhotsk Sea (Russian Federation and Japan)

The IUCN notes recent research showing genetic similarities and overlapping ranges of whales in the first two groups (Hudson Bay-Foxe Basin and Davis Strait-Baffin Bay stocks). International Whaling Commission (IWC) research suggests a recent anomalous population spurt in the Western Greenland population.

Population estimates for third and fifth groups (Barents Sea and Okhotsk Sea) are unreliable, although they are respectively listed as critically endangered and endangered. For comparative purposes, an article in Environment and History suggests that the Svalbard-Barents Sea population once hosted some 52,000 whales.

The Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort Seas stock serves as the center of bowhead whale political and scientific focus, primarily because of its association with aboriginal whaling in Russia and Alaska. In 1997 the IWC banned bowhead subsistence whaling, and within a few years they reconsidered the subject and agreed to a set of aboriginal whaling management guidelines. The Sub-Committee on Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling produces yearly reports reviewing their issues of interest.

In the United States, representatives of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission (AEWC) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reach yearly or multiple year agreements covering subsistence hunting.

Keeping up with the modern political world, the AEWC received earmark funding in the federal budget, and then spent close to the same amount of money lobbying federal officials to protect their interests.

© 2009. Patricia A. Michaels