North Pacific right whale

The North Pacific right whale (Eubalaena japonica) is a very large, thickset baleen whale species that is extremely rare and endangered.

The Northeast Pacific population, which summers in the southeastern Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, may have no more than 40 animals. A western population that summers near the Commander Islands, along the Kamchatka coast, along the Kuril Islands, and in the Sea of Okhotsk is thought to number in the low hundreds. Before commercial whaling in the North Pacific (i.e., pre-1835), there were probably over 20,000 right whales in the region. The taking of right whales in commercial whaling has been prohibited by one or more international treaties since 1935. Nevertheless, between 1962 and 1968, illegal Soviet whaling killed at least 529 right whales in the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska as well as at least 132 right whales in the Sea of Okhotsk, The Center for Biological Diversity argues that the North Pacific right whale is the most endangered whale on Earth.

Taxonomy

Since 2000, scientists have considered the right whales in the North Pacific and nearby seas to be a separate species, Eubalaena japonica, the North Pacific right whale. Genetic differences between E. japonica and E. australis are much smaller than those of other baleen whales among different ocean basins.

Before 2000, right whales in the North Pacific were considered conspecific with right whales in the North Atlantic and Southern Hemisphere, and all were described as Eubalaena glacialis in the scientific literature. All these animals closely resemble each other in outward appearance. The differences that separate them into separate species are genetic and discussed in the article on Balaenidae. The recognition of the different populations of Eubalaena whales as distinct species is supported by the Society for Marine Mammalogy, the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, and the International Whaling Commission.

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Description

thumb|left|North Pacific right whale by John Durban, NOAA

E. japonica is a very large, thickset baleen whale. It very closely resembles the North Atlantic right whale (E. glacialis) and the southern right whale (E. australis), so much so that they were long thought to be just one species. Indeed, without knowing which ocean an individual came from, the physical similarities are so extensive that individuals can only be identified to species by genetic analysis. Compared with other right whale species, E. japonica may be slightly larger. Like other baleen whales, female North Pacific right whales are larger than males. Also, North Pacific brindle-colored individuals are less common than they are among southern right whales.

E. japonica is easily distinguished from other North Pacific whale species by several fieldmarks: lack of dorsal fin or bump, very broad, black back, cyamid-covered callosities on the head and lips, a very arched jaw line, a very narrow rostrum, and often a V-shaped spout. North Pacific right whales can reach in length as adults, larger than the North Atlantic right whale. Typical body mass is from , There is one record of a whale captured during illegal Soviet operations, while reliability of larger measurements of with and 2 cases of one each from eastern and western pacific sides are uncertain. The largest officially recorded specimen was long and weighed . They are much larger than gray or humpback whales and also being very stout, particularly when compared to the other large baleen whales such as blue and fin whales. For 10 North Pacific right whales taken in the 1960s, their girth in front of the flippers was 0.73 of the total length of the whale. There have been claims that pectoral fins of pacific right whale are larger in portion than the other right whales and more pointed, and there may exist shape differences of tail by individuals or sex.

The closely related bowhead whale differs from the right whale by lacking any callosities, having a more arched jaw, and longer baleen. The seasonal ranges of the two species do not overlap. The bowhead whale is found at the edge of the pack ice in more Arctic waters in the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea, and occurs in the Bering Sea only during winter. The bowhead whale is not found in the North Pacific.

Although whalers in the North Pacific killed more than 15,000 right whales, there are remarkably few detailed descriptions of these whales. Most of our information about the anatomy and morphology of E. japonica comes from 13 whales killed by Japanese whalers in the 1960s and 10 whales killed by Russian whalers in the 1950s. Basic information about right whale lengths and sex is also available from coastal whaling operations in the early part of the 20th century. They also have been reported off Japan and in the Gulf of Alaska, feeding on copepods of the genus Neocalanus with a small quantity of euphausiid larvae, Euphausia pacifica.

As of 2006, scientists had minimal success with satellite tagging North Pacific right whales. The same whale watching operator had two sightings in 2006 and again had a very close encounter with a right whale in 2011. This animal was very curious and active; it swam around the vessel for more than 2 hours, breaching, spyhopping, tail-slapping, and pec-slapping close to the boat. The ship had to cruise away from the whale because it kept following them. Another curious and playful individual was encountered during a whale-watching trip off Bonin Islands in March 2014.

Like the other Eubalaena species, North Pacific right whales are known to interact with other cetacean species. Several observations of North Pacific right whales interacting with groups or solitary humpback whales have been recorded in both the Eastern and Western North Pacific. In 1998, a pair of gray whales was seen showing signs of aggression towards a right whale, chasing it off the coast of California, while in 2012, in the Piltun Bay region of Sakhalin Island's northeast coast, a young adult right whale was seen displaying typical social behavior within a group of critically endangered Western gray whales.

Vocalizations

Right whales in the Southern Hemisphere and the North Atlantic produce a variety of vocalizations that have been studied extensively over the past decade. Because the number of right whales in the North Pacific is so small and the whales are located in more remote areas, studying North Pacific right whale vocalizations has been more challenging, with fewer recordings. All of the sounds recorded for North Pacific right whales have been recorded on the northern portion of their range—in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska. It is unknown whether they made additional or different vocalizations on their wintering grounds or on the western part of their range. From these relatively few samples, it appears that right whales in the North Pacific make calls similar to those of other right whale species (Eubalaena spp.). However, the calls may differ in some details and in the relative frequency of their use.

These calls are all low-frequency sounds that appear to have social communication functions, but what exactly those functions are is not yet known. There is no evidence that right whales' sounds are used for echolocation, as is seen in dolphins and toothed whales.

thumb|right|Spectrogram of a right whale "upcall" recorded in the SE Bering Sea, Sue Moore, NMFS National Marine Mammal Laboratory (help in interpreting spectrograms)

Between 2000 and 2006, NOAA researchers deployed passive acoustic listening devices in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska. They recorded at least 3,600 North Pacific right whale calls. Nearly all of these calls came from the shallow shelf waters at approximately of the southeastern Bering Sea in what is now designated Critical Habitat for this species. 80% were frequency-modulated "up-calls" at an average frequency of 90–150 Hz and a duration of 0.7 seconds. "Down-up" calls accounted for about 5% of calls and swept down at 10–20 Hz before becoming a typical "up-call". Other call types, e.g., downsweeps and constant-tonal "moans," constituted less than 10% of total calls. The calls were clumped temporally—apparently involving some level of social interaction, as has been found in the calls of right whales in other oceans. The calls came more at night than during the day.

The upcalls of right whales are sufficiently distinct from the calls of other whale species that they can be used to identify the presence of right whales in the area by the calls alone, if care is taken in the review of those calls. Humpback whales also occur in much of the range of the North Pacific right whale, including in the Bering Sea. Parts of the highly variable and complex humpback calls can be similar to right whale calls, similar enough that confirmation that a call is in fact from a right whale usually requires a human to review the entire context of the call, rather than simply relying on an algorithm to identify the call as is possible for other species.

Right whales in other oceans have been recorded making a percussive vocalization known as a "gunshot call" or "gunshot". The role and purpose of this call are uncertain. However, until 2017, it had never been proven that right whales in the North Pacific were the ones making this type of call, so detection of gunshots was not considered a reliable indicator of right whale presence.

Until recently, it was thought that the most common call used by North Pacific right whales was the "upcall". This call is relatively stereotypic among all right whale individuals and populations. The next most common call has been labeled the "downcall", and this is also fairly stereotypical. Right whales also make a variety of other frequency-variable calls of different durations. However, these are so varied that researchers have not categorized them.

Until recently, it was not proven that North Pacific right whales made a percussive call, similar to one made by right whales in other oceans, called a "gunshot"—that sounds like a shotgun being fired. Gunshot calls appear to be made by males and may be associated with some aspect of mating. Here is a link to audio recordings of these types of calls from a North Atlantic right whale.

In 2017, research by NOAA scientist Jessica L. Crance and other NOAA scientists definitively attributed gunshots to North Pacific right whales and found that, among the animals sampled, gunshots were heard ~50 times more frequently than upcalls. Because gunshots to be used much more and are less likely to be mistaken for a humpback call, this should improve the detectability of right whales in the North Pacific using passive acoustic monitoring, and improve the ability to locate individual whales from ships as well. However, on a more localized regional scale, these correlations weakened.

In winter, North Pacific right whales can occur from the Bering Sea as far south as the Bonin Islands. It is the whales that go south that are frequently seen close to shore. Right whales have historically been found closer to shore in very shallow waters than other large baleen whales, but they are by no means limited to near-shore habitats. There is a record of a female North Atlantic right whale giving birth 63 km off the shores of Jacksonville, Florida.

Many of the very near-shore sightings of North Pacific right whales have occurred in Russia, Japan, and South Korea. They have been seen to enter into ports, staying just next to piers or wharfs,

Summering congregations were known to occur in various areas, as indicated by whaling records. The following locations had larger numbers of catch records: Korf in Olyutorsky, and Kambalny Bay. Of these, at least Kambalny Bay still hosts several whales at times; 5 whales were observed from the shore in December, 2012.]]

Before the arrival of the pelagic whaling fleet in the North Pacific right whale's range after 1835, the whale's population, at least in the eastern part of its range, was probably at its original size, in the range of 20,000–30,000 whales. The whale population in the western waters around Japan may have been reduced from its original size as a result of historic net whaling.

There was essentially no Aboriginal hunting of right whales along the west coast of North America by Native Americans before the 19th century. There was a small Aleut whale hunt in the Aleutian Islands, but it was almost certainly too small to reduce the original whale population. and the effect of the industries were more notable on the whale populations than the later American whaling, resulting not only in financial solvencies of many whaling groups but also in disputes between feudal domains in western Japan that required the shogunate itself to settle. Among this, it has been revealed that Japanese people have been trying to shift the responsibility of whale declines to the later American whalers to control public opinions since the end of the Edo period.

Current population

The current population of North Pacific right whales is estimated at 30–35 whales in the eastern North Pacific and 300+ whales in the western portion of its range. Even if one considers the combined population size estimate of both apparent stocks of this species, this is the smallest known population of any whale species aside from the North Atlantic right whale (est. 200–250), and probably only 2 percent of its population in 1835 when pelagic whaling first reached the North Pacific. Accordingly, the species is listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List and the eastern population is categorized as extremely endangered.

The International Whaling Commission and the United States National Marine Fisheries Service consider North Pacific right whales in these two areas to be two somewhat discrete populations and manage them as separate stocks. The extent of independence of these two apparent populations of whales, both geographically and genetically, is very poorly understood due to a lack of data, but discussing them separately is convenient for describing recent sightings and population estimates.

Bering Sea and North East Pacific

Most recent sightings and acoustic records of right whales in the eastern part of their range have come from a relatively small area in the southeastern Bering Sea. Most of these records are within, or near, the U.S.-designated Critical Habitat for the North Pacific Right whale. A much smaller number of sightings have come from the Gulf of Alaska and the coasts of British Columbia and further south. The very small number of North Pacific right whale calls detected during the NMFS acoustic research—hundreds per year-contrasts with the vastly greater number (hundreds of thousands) of bowhead whale calls during migration in the western Arctic and blue whale calls off California—further reinforces the conclusion that the population size of North Pacific right whales in the Bering Sea is very small. The 2015 reviewers had found no new information that increased the population estimate above that made in 2010 when National Marine Fisheries Service scientists estimated that the population of North Pacific right whales that summer in the southeastern Bering Sea was about 30 animals.

Prior estimates of larger current right whale population numbers in the eastern North Pacific were highly speculative. A comprehensive review of sighting data and population estimates in 2001 concluded that "none of the published estimates of abundance relating to North Pacific right whales can be regarded as reliable ... [most] estimates appear to be little more than conjecture ... [and] no quantitative data exist to confirm any of these estimates."

The 2010 article was the first to present an objective quantitative rationale for its low estimates. The scientists' mark-recapture photographic studies suggested a population of 31 whales (95% confidence level = 23–54), and their genotyping study suggested a population of 28 whales (95% confidence level = 24–42). The scientists estimated that the population contains 8 females (95% confidence interval: 7–18) and 20 males (95% confidence interval: 17–37). They concluded that "Although these estimates may relate to a Bering Sea subpopulation, other data suggest that the total eastern North Pacific population is unlikely to be much larger. In 2004, at least two calves were seen.

In the Gulf of Alaska, there have been opportunistic sightings (1998, 2004) and acoustic records (2000) of individual right whales near Kodiak Island.

Additionally, there have been two sightings of individual right whales off British Columbia in 2013. A third sighting was recorded in 2018.

Sea of Okhotsk and Western North Pacific

The 2015 review of whale status concluded that there are more right whales in the western North Pacific than in the eastern region. Still, even estimates of that population place it among the world's smallest marine mammal populations.

In the west, most recent sightings of right whales occur along the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Kuril Islands, the Sea of Okhotsk, and the Commander Islands, along the coasts of Japan. A map of this area includes Russian territorial waters (12 miles from shore), Russian Exclusive Economic Zone out to 200 miles from shore, Japanese territorial and EEZ waters, and some international waters, even in the center of the Sea of Okhotsk. As a result, surveys for whales and fisheries have generally not been able to comprehensively cover the region, particularly the nearshore areas, as has been possible in the eastern North Pacific.

The Sea of Okhotsk

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, observers on Japanese research vessels reported 28 sightings of right whales in the Sea of Okhotsk. From this sample, the Japanese scientists estimated a population of 900 right whales in the Sea of Okhotsk, albeit with wide confidence intervals (90% CI = 400–2,100). Data obtained during Japanese sighting surveys for minke whales in 1989, 1990, and 1992 led Japanese scientists to estimate a population of 922 right whales in the Sea of Okhotsk (95% CI: 404–2,108) (Miyashita and Kato 1998, IWC 2001:26). However, the reviewers who prepared the IUCN Red List documentation concluded that given the very wide confidence intervals surrounding the Japanese estimate and the lack of clear evidence of any recent increase in numbers, the lower end of the range of that abundance estimate (i.e., about 400) should be used for assessment (Reilly et al. 2008k). Other scientists also wrote that the Japanese estimate was based on faulty methodology, and that the population was likely only half as large or smaller.

Japan

More recently, surveys for large whales in offshore waters east of Hokkaido (Japan) and the Kuril Islands from 1994 to 2013 resulted in 55 sightings of right whales (77 individuals), including ten female/calf pairs (Matsuoka et al. 2014).

Kamchatka

There were 19 sightings of 31 whales in the Russian EEZ (mainly around the northern Kuril Islands, the southern Kamchatka Peninsula, and the Commander Islands) between 2003 and 2014, based on a 2015 review of right whale sightings in Russian waters.

Another 10 sightings of right whales, in five groups, were reported in 2012 surveys southeast of the Kamchatka Peninsula and off the Kuril Islands (Sekiguchi et al. 2014) and (Ovsyanikova et al. 2015). The 2015 reviewers concluded that all data collected since 1992 in the western North Pacific, especially the Sea of Okhotsk, need to be analyzed to produce a new abundance estimate, enabling completion of an assessment for this subpopulation. shows catch locations around the world, including the location by month of most of the 2,118 right whales taken in the North Pacific between 1839 and 1909, using data copied from 249 logbooks. His charts do not adjust for the nonrandom distribution of whalers. Chart C shows three main concentrations of right whales—one in the Gulf of Alaska, one along Kamchatka and the Sea of Okhotsk, and another in the Sea of Japan.

Maury's detailed whale charts in this series languished largely forgotten in a few libraries until the 1980s. When they began to be studied more rigorously, the Maury charts have an advantage over the Townsend chart in that the number of whales seen/killed in a given area can be adjusted for the amount of search effort, giving a more accurate indication of the species' abundance in that area during that month. The Maury charts also quantify the search effort by region and month, whereas the Townsend charts address it only qualitatively.

North Pacific whalers hunted mainly in the summer, and that is reflected in the Maury Whale Charts. There were almost no winter sightings and very few south of 20°N. The densest concentrations occurred along both coasts of Kamchatka and in the Gulf of Alaska.

The Maury charts were based on tables transcribed by two assistants. A more recent examination of the logbooks directly revealed that one of the assistants made numerous transcription errors.

Recently, data from the data sheets behind the Maury and Townsend charts, along with other logbook data, have been rigorously combined to produce the best maps yet of the distribution of North Pacific right whales in the 19th century.

Of particular interest are the questions of how many "stocks" of right whales exist in the North Pacific. Was there just a single population across the North Pacific? Was there an eastern population that summered in the Gulf of Alaska and a second population in the western North Pacific? Was the population in the Sea of Okhotsk a third population distinct from the whales found in the Pacific east of Kamchatka?

Recently, researchers reanalyzed this early whaling data, along with more recent, but much sparser, sighting data. They conclude that there are probably at least two stocks of right whales in the western and eastern North Pacific, but it remains unclear whether the Okhotsk population is a separate stock. E. japonica summer distribution extends north into the southeastern part of the Bering Sea. In summer, the Bowhead migrates north through the Bering Straits and is in the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea. In winter, the ice-loving Bowhead moves south into the Bering Sea, but the right whales have migrated further south of the Aleutian Islands into the North Pacific.

Catch records suggest that historical ranges were much broader than those of the current status and strongly overlapped with the ranges of bowhead whales. In the Bering Sea, feeding/summering grounds could have reached further north up to the Kusilvak Census Area, such as at Kokechik and Scammon Bays in the east, north of St. Matthew Island and Nunivak Island as well as analysis of listening device records, only a few small areas report recent sightings in the eastern North Pacific. The southeastern Bering Sea produced the most, followed by the Gulf of Alaska, and then California. In 2000, 71 calls were recorded by a deep-water passive acoustic site at . An additional 10 were recorded near Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska at , another whale which is thought to be a sub-adult animal was observed in Uganik Bay in December 2011, being the first modern record of the species on the western side of Kodiak Island. This was one of the few sightings that have occurred in inshore waters in the area. One right whale was seen resting in Pasagshak Bay in May 2010. Other records along Gulf of Alaska include off Yakutat Bay in 1979, outer bank of Fairweather Ground at 100 km southwest of Cape Fairweather, and so on.

On August 10, 2004, a group of two was seen in the Bering Sea. Another sighting of 17, including two calves, was noted in September, and one in the Gulf of Alaska.

A review of more than 3,600 North Pacific right whale calls detected by passive listening devices between 2000 and 2006 strongly suggests that the whales migrate into the southeast Bering Sea in late spring and remain there until late fall. The earliest were in late May and the latest in December. The peak calling period was July through October. Most were detected at shallow-shelf sites within the designated Critical Habitat area. From October through December 2005, several calls were detected at the northwestern middle-shelf and deeper-shelf sites, suggesting that they may occur at different times of the year and during migration.

A right whale was observed between the Alaska Peninsula and Kilokak Rocks in July 2017, which makes it the first confirmed sighting of the species in the vicinity in the past half-century.

Northwestern Pacific

thumb|left|Map of the Sea of Okhotsk

There are very few reports of right whales in the western North Pacific. A remnant population of right whales persists in the Sea of Okhotsk at least in the summer, along with remnant populations of western gray and bowhead whales.

The distribution of these three species is quite different. In summer, bowheads inhabit the northwestern corner of the Sea of Okhotsk around Academy and Ulban Bays to the Shantar Islands, while gray whales stay close to Sakhalin Island, near massive new energy developments. In contrast, the right whales inhabit the southern Sea of Okhotsk around the Kuril Islands and east of Sakhalin Island. Some recent sighting records are available.

Recent occurrences of right whales near the Kuril islands are largely unknown due to lack of observation effort; however, recent sightings indicate that the areas adjacent to Paramushir Island and surrounding, and west of the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula are seemingly one of the most populated locations for this species today.

Even though the eastern coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula is considered a feeding ground for right whales, only a few records exist from the eastern side, including sightings in 1978 and in 2009.

Right whales were historically heavily hunted in the Commander Islands, where only a handful of sightings have been recorded in recent years. However, encounters with this species around the Commander Islands and off eastern Kamchatka seem to occur more regularly than in the last several decades.

This area's remoteness makes observation very difficult and expensive. Based on survey records from "JARPN" and "JARPN II" conducted by Institute of Cetacean Research, the 40 right whales seen were distributed mainly in offshore waters from 1994 to 2007.

In summer 2009, a co-operative cetacean sighting survey was conducted in the Sea of Okhotsk by the Japanese National Research Institute of Far Seas Fisheries and the Russian (VNIRO) institute. During this survey, 17 groups of 29 right whales were recorded and photographed. Analysis of the photographs revealed no matches among the individuals, resulting in a minimum record of 29 whales encountered during the survey.

Besides offshore waters, three major hot spots for right whales where with good increases in sighting numbers have been confirmed in coastal Russian waters have been detected: the Commander Islands, the First Kurilskiy Strait (between Cape Lopatka and Paramushir Island), and the east coast of Sakhalin including Piltun Bay, the only congregating area known for endangered western gray whales.

Pelagic waters off the southeastern Kamchatka Peninsula are the location with the highest sighting frequency in recent years, even though this area is far offshore, and it is unclear where these whales migrate southward.

No coastal or other wintering ground has been found for North Pacific right whales. and this may contribute to support the once-abandoned idea; existence of historical breeding grounds in coastal waters including along North American continent. Ryukyu Islands had been suggested as a wintering ground for the western population, but little evidence supports this. areas off Shanghai and the Zhoushan archipelago, Taiwan Strait (e.g. Fujian coasts like Pingtan Island, Penghu Islands, west coast of Taiwan), the northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Some whales were caught off Hainan Island. This area is possibly the southernmost location of the known range for the western population. The whales are also known to occur around the northern Mariana Islands. A map had been academically created which forecasts potential wintering habitats for right whales in north Pacific according to environmental factors corresponding to that of north Atlantic species, including further south to Hainan, Leizhou Peninsula, and northern Gulf of Tonkin. Historical occurrences of vagrancy around Borneo have been considered as well, while possibilities of migrations to or through Philippines are unclear.

The population(s) that historically migrated through the Sea of Japan to the Yellow and Bohai Seas were likely driven to functional extinction. No right whales have been recorded in China and in South Korea since the catches in October 1974 for Korea and 1977 for China, and there have been only two confirmed records of a stranded and a by-caught individuals since in 1901 in Japanese waters of the Sea of Japan.

Constant appearances on both sides of the Pacific were recorded until 1998, and all the southernmost records at four locations of almost the same latitude were made on both sides around 1996–97; Amami Ōshima, Bonin Islands, Hawaii, and Cabo San Lucas. Last records off the west coast were in 1998 off Cape San Martin and Monterey. Afterward, no records were kept until 2014. In the Bonin Islands and off Oregon and California, constant occurrences were confirmed in the 1990s. What factors caused the sudden rise in sighting trends in the 2010s and the disappearance in the 2000s in many of the former range, especially in mid- to lower latitudes, are unknown. The Bonin Islands are the only location where the sighting interval of constancy was confirmed and where underwater filming was successful in modern times. Off Japan, sudden rises in numbers were confirmed in 2003, 2006, 2008, and 2011, with an exceptionally large number recorded in 2011: at least 3 sightings, 1 entanglement, and 1 stranding of an 18 m animal. Fragments of a lower jaw, measuring 4.6 m in length and likely to be artificially sliced off, were discovered on a beach in Akkeshi in June 2014.

Western North Pacific

Japan

The occurrence of North Pacific right whales in Japanese waters appears to show several patterns. Historic and modern sightings appear to occur more frequently in three areas: (1) the north, particularly north of Hokkaido, (2) along the coasts of central Japan, and (3) among Japan's southern islands, particularly the Bonin Islands.

The waters around and north of Hokkaido were historically regions where 19th-century pelagic whalers hunted for right whales during summer and fall. This region, and north through the Kuril Islands, the southern Sea of Okhotsk, and Kamchatka, were feeding grounds for right whales. Some of the recent sightings of right whales off Japan are consistent with this pattern.

Right whales were formerly abundant off the coast of northeastern Japan where there have been a few sightings in recent years including observations from ICR research surveys (single animals confirmed off Kushiro, Hokkaido, in September 2002 and off the Pacific coast of Honshu in April 2003). Local fishermen have regularly seen a few animals per year in the area (personal contact). There is one unconfirmed sighting off the Shiretoko Peninsula in 2008.

A breaching right whale was observed during a sightseeing cruise off the Shiretoko Peninsula in July 2013 making it the first confirmed sighting in the area for several decades and the first recorded in Hokkaido. A right whale, most likely the same individual, was seen in the area for the following two weeks until a pod of local killer whales came back to Shari coasts. The observer noted that many of the local tour-operating boats, cruising at high speeds, did not seem to detect the whale resting on the water's surface, forcing the right whale to submerge quickly to avoid collisions. In 2018 and 2019, additional sightings were made from the west coast of the peninsula. 2018 sighting and one of two sightings in 2019 have been made by the same tour operator, Doutou Kanko Kaihatsu (Corporation) (:jp:道東観光開発).

The occurrence of right whales along the coasts of central Japan appears to reflect their past migration through these areas. There are some locations along the Pacific side of Honshu where sightings are particularly more common; from south of Tokyo Bay to all around the Izu Peninsula, from the Izu Islands to the Bonin Islands, the Kii Peninsula, Cape Muroto, and adjacent waters. In the first area, there was one entanglement freed alive in April 2000 off Tateyama, and two strandings at Izu Ōshima in 2002 and 2005.

Some right whales still migrate south along Japan's coasts, particularly the Pacific side of the archipelago, but the portion of the southward migration that passes Japan is unknown.

The presence of right whales among the southern Japanese islands suggests that a wintering ground may exist there.

An right whale was entangled off Kamogawa coast in May, A right whale of was sighted on January 28, 2014, making it the first record in the East China Sea in the 21st century. One whale about the same size entered the port of Ushibuka, Kumamoto on March 28, 2014.

In addition, possibly two different animals were seen off Bonin Islands on 12th and 25th March 2014. Later on, one was larger and was curious about whale-watching vessels. Yasuhiro Morita of Ogasawara Diving Center succeeded in encountering right whales on four occasions near the Bonin Islands.

Most of the recent sightings have occurred along the Japanese coast. Historically, right whales may have wintered in the East China Sea from the Ryukyu Islands to the south of China, including Taiwan, though there is little scientific evidence supporting this idea. Modern sightings in the East and South China Seas, or in the Yellow and Bohai Seas, are very rare, and records are scarce. Only a few confirmed sightings in the area have occurred. All the 5 records in the East China Sea in the last 110 years were recorded only on Amami Ōshima island and with Sukomobanare Island. Additionally, all of the modern records of right whales on mainland coasts of China were concentrated on the island of Haiyang in northern Yellow Sea.

Right whales may have wintered in the Bonin Islands, but few recent sightings support this idea. The Ogasawara Whale-watching Association reported seeing 3 groups of 4 different right whales in the Bonin Islands in the 1990s (two animals from different groups were photographed and recorded on underwater video); A pair of possible right whales was seen migrating south outside the port of Aogashima in December 2007. Another group of 2 or 3 animals appeared just off Mikura island in March 2008. One animal was sighted very close to shore in Niijima, 2011 (later described). A small right whale was seen nearby Manazuru Peninsula on April 3, and one or two right whales were sighted off Miyake Island on April 21, 2016.

Off the Kii peninsula, there was one sighting in June 1999, one mortal entanglement in April 2003, and three records of two animals in the spring-summer 2006 (both from many whale watching vessels). One of these whales was very active. A right whale escaped alive from a fishing net near Taiji Town in January 2009, a very close observation during a whale watching tour (later described) in April 2011. An individual was sighted off Kushimoto within a pod of rough-toothed dolphins in February, 2016. Off Cape Muroto, two entanglements (both escaped safely) were reported in February 1971 and February 2008. Two adults stranded in the northern and southern Ibaraki Prefecture in 2003 and 2009.

Modern sightings in the Japan Sea are very seldom made. Some strandings were reported from the 1970s through the late 2000s, but none of the possible right whale sightings were published or confirmed. Whaling of right whales continued until 1978 in the Sea of Japan. A photo of a Right whale being hunted in 1922 in the Sea of Japan is available.

Unusually high numbers of right whales were recorded off Japan from February to mid-April 2011. One mature female of body length was stranded on the Shimoda coast on the southern Izu Peninsula. Carcass of this individual was not covered by barnacles. It had been previously sighted off Inatori, and another animal was sighted very close to shore off Inatori again. A photo and a video are available. Another possible right whale was observed just outside a port in Manaduru in May (no photo was taken).

In the Izu Islands, one whale was observed very close to shore, tail-slapping for an extended period. No photo of its head was taken.

Off the Kii Peninsula in April 2011, the same whale-watching operator who had encountered two right whales in 2006 had a very close encounter with one. This whale was very curious and active; it swam around the vessel for more than 2 hours, repeatedly displayed aerial actions (breaching, spyhopping, tail-slapping, pec-slapping) alongside it, and the vessel had to cruise away because it kept following. Many professional whale photographers were on this tour; some of them were also on the board when this tour operator conducted the 2006 sightings.

Some whale watching or touring companies have encountered with several right whales or on several occasions such as several companies associated with Ogasawara Whale Watching Association (four animals in the 1990s), Nanki Marine Leisure Service (three animals in 2006 and 2011), Mikura Island Tourism Association (two whales in 2008), Godzilla-rock cruise (Gojira-iwa kankō) and its subsidiary, Shiretoko Fox Cruise since the 2000s (more than three times at least), Heritage Expeditions (at least three whales in the 2010s).

A young right whale was killed when it entangled itself in a net off Ōita Prefecture in March 2011. In fact, this was reported by a biologist who saw a right whale's meat being sold at a local market, and was later reported to a local aquarium.

A sailor on a yacht had a very close encounter with a cow-calf pair breaching off the Miura Peninsula in the early 2000s. This sighting was later confirmed by a local marine biologist working at an aquarium.

Wintering/calving grounds

No coastal or other wintering ground has been found for North Pacific right whales.

Reviewing of other Eubalaena species' biology, as the population of E. australis in New Zealand primarily use subantarctic Auckland and Campbell Islands as wintering/calving grounds, and the majority of non-calving adults of E. glacialis winter in pelagic waters of Bay of Fundy with recent records of new-born calves present in the region. These areas are known to be suitable for feeding/summering; hence, it is possible that right whales in the North Pacific do not always need to migrate to warmer waters for wintering/calving, and historical wintering ranges could have been much broader than previously considered. Large portions of southern rights also wintered in pelagic waters in the past, from subpolar to nearby equatorial regions.

In winter, the whales' distribution is particularly mysterious. There have been a few sightings close to shores in California and even Baja, particularly in the 1990s along locations like La Jolla, Point Sur, Big Sur coasts, Piedras Blancas, San Simeon, Point Montara, and in Santa Barbara Channel. They have been rare, of short duration and none since 1998. Largest numbers of whales sighted at one times in eastern Pacific outside of SE Bering Sea since after the late 20th century were of 8 animals off Destruction Island in 1959, sightings off Cape Flattery of 3 whales in and 1967 and 6 or 7 whales in 1973, and likely a pair seen off southwest of San Miguel Island in February 2015. In the western Pacific, the latest of recent records were of a close encounter by a yachter with a cow-calf pair off Sajima Island in Sagami Bay in the early 2000s When a right whale was observed along the coast of La Jolla in 2017, the animal was initially misidentified as a gray whale.

Western North Pacific

thumb|Tail-slapping right whale, [[Nii-jima, Tokyo, March 02, 2011]]

Modern observation of right whales in southern Japan and in Izu and Bonin Islands, and in Amami Ōshima, didn't show any signs of whales spending long periods there (although being relaxed, resorting activities have been confirmed and Midway Islands. According to other Eubalaena species' seasonal distribution, some proportions of Pacific right whales could winter in colder waters, and congregation areas could also be restricted to particular harbors or straits of particular oceanic islands. It could be also said that wintering distributions of E. japonica could have extended further south to regions near the Equator line, according to the historical distributions of right whales in South Pacific that a population existed to winter on pelagic waters on lower latitude which is comparable to latitudes of Diego Garcia, Egmont Islands, and Great Chagos Bank, and E. glacialis likely migrated south to Mauritania to Senegal in the past.

Korea

The first record of a living animal since the whaling in the Sea of Japan occurred at Namhae near Busan in February 2015, 41 years after the last record in the Korean EEZ.

China

There was a sighting off Shenzhen in 2015, although this was broadcast as a humpback whale, and the first stranding of the species was recorded on Shandong Province between 2000 and 2006.

Whale watching

There have been several locations in the western North Pacific where right whales have been regularly observed close to shore in recent years, but intentionally observing right whales during commercial operations is a different story. Expedition tours targeting Sea of Okhotsk, Kamchatka, and Commander islands region allows the highest possibilities to observe these whales, however, to encounter with North Pacific right whales during whale watching tours are extremely low, only a handful of operators around the world have had. One extraordinary case occurred in Japan. "Nanki Marine Leisure Service", a whale-watching operator operating off the Kumano-nada Sea, had 2 encounters with different animals in 2006 and another in 2011. For sighting in 2011, it could be one of the most well-recorded observations ever in history, as some of the aerial behaviors were observed for the first time, such as keeping following vessels over several hours, continuously displaying almost all-known surface behaviours of the species in a row. Several camera operators were on board in both 2006 and 2011, and Kenji Oda, a professional whale cameraman, had two encounters in 2006 and later. The Bonin Islands are the location with the second-highest sighting rates during commercial tours,

Unsustainably small population

When wild animal populations get very small, they become much more vulnerable to certain risks than larger populations. One of these risks is inbreeding depression. On the same day, the U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS) published a notice of a proposed Oil and Gas Lease Sale 214 for in the North Aleutian Basin. In January 2009, the MMS reported in a Scoping Report for the Environmental Impact Statement for the Lease Sale that "Many commentators expressed concern about impacts resulting from industrial activity and noise to the North Pacific right whales." More than half of the proposed Oil and Gas Lease Sale 214 in the Bering Sea is within the designated critical habitat of the North Pacific right whale.

On March 31, 2010, President Obama issued a memorandum for the Secretary of the Interior withdrawing Sale 214 from disposition by leasing through June 30, 2017, the Bristol Bay area of the North Aleutian Basin in Alaska. Right whales were not mentioned specifically in the reasons for this withdrawal.

Environmental changes

The habitat of E. japonica is changing in ways that threaten its survival. Two environmental effects of particular concern are global warming and pollution.

The high densities of copepods that right whales require for normal feeding are the result of high phytoplankton productivity and currents that aggregate the copepods. Satellite studies of right whales show them traveling considerable distances to find these localized copepod concentrations.

Global warming can affect both copepod population levels and the oceanographic conditions that concentrate them. This ecological relationship has been studied intensively in the western North Atlantic.

Hybridization with bowhead whales

Recently, scientists have begun to notice that the warming Arctic Ocean and land are resulting in a shift in species distribution, breaking down climate barriers that have prevented hybridization between closely related species. The most reported examples have been the three confirmed grizzly–polar bear hybrids. In 2010, a team led by National Marine Mammal Laboratory ecologist Brendan Kelly documented 34 potential hybridizations among distinct populations or species of Arctic marine mammals, many of which are endangered or threatened. These observed hybridizations included, in 2009, a cross between a bowhead whale and a North Pacific right whale in the Bering Sea. Kelly stated that "The breedings between the North Pacific right whale, whose numbers have fallen below 200, and the more numerous bowhead whale, could push the former to extinction (Over time, the hybrids would begin to outnumber the sparse right whales)". Co-author Andrew Whitely wrote: "Breedings between these marine mammals near the North Pole are likely to result in fertile offspring, because many of these animals have the same number of chromosomes...[and] Over the short term the hybrid offspring from these Arctic animal matings will likely be strong and healthy, because unlike inbreeding, which magnifies deleterious genes, so-called outbreeding can mask these genes ... But over time, as the hybrids mate randomly, those harmful genes will come out of hiding and make the offspring less fit and less capable of surviving."

In the Sea of Okhotsk, habitat sharing with an endangered population of bowhead whales has been confirmed in the northern parts of the sea, especially within the region that contains Akademii and Ul'bansky Bays, as well as critically endangered western gray whales. Whales may appear into northeastern part as well such as Shelikhov Gulf. Extent of effect to both species by habitat sharing is unknown.

Entanglement in fishing gear and interaction with marine debris

thumb|left|An entanglement of a North Pacific right whale at Hokkawa, [[Higashiizu on April 4, 2020, photo by Yoshiyuki Nakawaza, Dive Green. The whale was released the next day.]]

In its 2013 evaluation of the threats to survival of the North Pacific right whale, NOAA examined the possible impacts of entanglement in fishing gear and ingestion of marine debris. Entanglement in fishing gear is a major threat to the survival of the North Atlantic right whale. Marine debris includes, among other items, abandoned or lost fishing gear and small plastic items that could be ingested.

In the eastern Bering Sea, gear is deployed in nearshore waters, areas "not associated and generally not overlapping with known North Pacific right whale distribution." Pot fisheries occur in offshore waters, but are often deployed in winter when right whales are not known to be present.

• June 2013 – British Columbia, Canada. One of the two right whales seen had serious injuries to its rostrum that appear to have been caused by entanglement in fishing gear.
• 2011 – Japan a young right whale was killed by being entangled in net in Ōita Prefecture.
• August 3, 2003 – in the Sea of Okhotsk at 47° 04 580N 146°-06-566"E two right whales sighted in 3,200 m water depth. One of the whales had a large scar anterior to the blowhole, caused by fishing gear, such as the mainline of crab nets (photos).
• December 25, 1996 – in the Sea of Okhotsk, one right whale was found alive but entangled in crab net gear. The whale was released from the gear but escaped, still carrying 5 m of mainline. especially in the Tsushima Strait. The Japanese Coast Guard has begun collecting sighting records of large whales in the area, but the species identity for most records is unspecified in their log; it is unknown whether any right whales have ever been sighted.

Ship noise

In its 2013 Recovery Plan, NOAA reviewed the scientific evidence on the effects of ship noise on right whales at length. No studies have been done on North Pacific right whales due to the difficulty of even finding them. Several studies on North Atlantic right whales have been reviewed. Ship noise in the oceans has increased dramatically due to both the volume of shipping and oil and gas exploration. Increased noise may make right whales more vulnerable to ship strikes. It may also impose a sublethal level of stress on them, potentially affecting their health. (citation).

NOAA concluded that "the severity of ship noise to North Pacific right whales is unknown, and the uncertainty of the threat is high. Therefore, the relative impact to recovery is ranked as unknown."

Predation

The 2013 U.S. Recovery Plan noted that there is "currently no evidence" of predation on North Pacific right whale by killer whales, and that none of the photos of North Pacific right whales showed no images of tooth rake marks typical of killer whale attacks, but "this is not to suggest ... this predation does not occur, only that it has not been observed".

There are records of shark attacks on North Atlantic right whales on their calving grounds. In the Canadian Arctic 17 Inuit reported having seen killer whales attack bowhead whales.

The U.S. Recovery Plan concludes that any predation would likely have a greater impact on calf and subadult age classes, and that the relative impact of predation on recovery is ranked as low severity and medium uncertainty.

Whaling

Historic whaling is the reason North Pacific right whales are so endangered today. The two critical periods of whaling were 1839 to 1849 (pelagic whaling, 90% American ships) and 1963 to 1968 (illegal Soviet whaling). The illegal Soviet whaling in the 1960s killed 514 right whales in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, plus 136 right whales in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Kuril Islands. In contrast, there are no reliable places where researchers can find North Pacific right whales. In the eastern portion of their range, there are so few whales that researchers have described the search as looking for a needle in a haystack. In the western portion of their range, the ability of researchers to find right whales in the Sea of Okhotsk and Kuril Islands is greatly hindered by the difficulty and expense of getting access to these areas, which are in Russian territorial waters and EEZ, and by the fog that makes visibility minimal.

The species is so rare that the National Marine Fisheries Service had only intermittent success in locating North Pacific right whales in the southeast Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska for decades. Small numbers of right whales were located in the Bering Sea in 1966 and 1997-2004. Until recently nearly all the records of North Pacific right whales have been visual observations from ships or from shore. However, on their summer grounds in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, the sea conditions are frequently so rough, windy, and/or foggy that detection of right whales known to be present is problematic. In 2015, a NOAA research cruise in the Bering Sea off Kodiak focused on finding right whales. They detected acoustic signals from a right whale on two occasions, but in neither case were the researchers able to visually locate the whale. Previous NOAA dedicated ship surveys in the southeast Bering Sea have also had only sporadic success in visibly locating right whales. A month-long NOAA dedicated research cruises in August 2007 in the southeast Bering Sea sighted no right whales.

More recently, scientists have increasingly been using a new technology to detect right whales acoustically. As described above, right whales make calls that can be distinguished from the calls of other species, so that researchers have concluded that such detections constitute reliable records based solely on the acoustic recordings.

The technology can detect submerged animals regardless of water clarity.

Acoustic searches for North Pacific right whales have been conducted using two types of listening devices. Directional and ranging sonobuoy are floating devices that are deployed from ships and monitored for short periods of time (hours). Alternative listening devices are permanently moored acoustic recorders that sample over long periods (months) until the acoustic data is retrieved by a ship.

Acoustic detection and visual searches are often used in conjunction. Right whales are detected acoustically and then are located visually by shipboard observers. In August 2004, NOAA listening devices in the southeastern Bering Sea detected right whale vocalizations. The researchers then deployed directional and ranging sonobuoys to locate the calling whales. This information allowed researchers to locate the whales and photograph, biopsy, dart, and visually tag two of them.

In 1946, the major whaling countries signed the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, which established the International Whaling Commission (IWC), whose regulations first took effect in 1949. Since its inception, the IWC has banned the commercial hunting of right whales. Currently, the IWC classifies E. japonica as a "Protection Stock" which bars commercial whaling.

However, the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling explicitly allows member countries to issue permits to their own citizens to kill whales for scientific research, even if that species is otherwise protected from commercial hunts. In 1955, the Soviet Union granted its whalers permits to kill 10 North Pacific right whales, and in 1956 and 1958, the Japanese granted permits to their whalers to kill 13 North Pacific right whales. The member nation issuing the scientific permit must report these permits to the International Whaling Commission. The 23 North Pacific right whales taken pursuant to these permits provide much of the published data on morphology and reproductive biology for this species. Any country has issued no further scientific whaling permits to take North Pacific right whales.

Under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), all right whales (Eubalaena spp.) are listed in Appendix I which bans all international commercial trade of parts or products of the right whale species. (CMS) as this species has been categorized as being in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant proportion of their range and CMS Parties strive towards strictly protecting these animals, conserving or restoring the places where they live, mitigating obstacles to migration, and controlling other factors that might endanger them.

United States laws and regulations

Actions involving the North Pacific right whale are subject to three separate laws. First, the Whaling Convention Act of 1949 authorizes the federal government to adopt regulations that mirror the regulations (the "Schedule") adopted by the International Whaling Commission, including the IWC's ban on the commercial take of any right whales.

Second, the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) gives jurisdiction for management of all whale species to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the Department of Commerce. NOAA determined that the North Pacific right whale is currently "depleted" as that term is used in the 1973 Act. Such classification affords the species various protections under the MMPA.

Third, under the Endangered Species Act, NOAA has listed the North Pacific right whale as endangered. This law provides the species with additional protections which overlap those of the MMPA, but generally are more protective.

Critical habitat

right|thumb|Critical habitat for E. japonica

The Endangered Species Act directs the managing agencies, in this case NOAA, to designate portions of oceans as critical habitat, which triggers specific protective measures.

On October 4, 2000, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) petitioned NMFS to designate the southeast Bering Sea shelf from 55 to 60°N as critical habitat for E. japonica. On February 20, 2002, NMFS declined (67 FR 7660), arguing that the available information was insufficient for such a finding. CBD challenged NMFS in court, and in June 2005, a federal judge directed the agency to make a designation. In 2006, NMFS complied, designating one in the Gulf of Alaska south of Kodiak Island and one in the southeast Bering Sea (71 FR 38277, July 6, 2006). Later, NMFS split the "northern right whale" into E. glacialis and E. japonica, and reissued its rule.

Critical habitats must contain one or more "primary constituent elements" (PCEs) that are essential to the conservation of the species. NMFS identified as PCEs: species of large zooplankton in right whale feeding areas, in particular the copepods Calanus marshallae, Neocalanus cristatus, and Thysanoessa raschii whose high lipid content and occurrence make them preferred prey items, and physical concentrating mechanisms, physical and biological features that aggregate prey into densities high enough to support efficient feeding.

Once a critical habitat has been designated, federal agencies must consult with NOAA to ensure that any action they authorize, fund, or carry out is unlikely to destroy or adversely modify it.

On March 10, 2022, the Center for Biological Diversity filed with the NMFS a "Petition to Revise the Critical Habitat Designation for the North Pacific Right Whale (Eubalaena japonica) Under the Endangered Species Act", urged expansion of the critical habitat designation to "a migratory corridor through the Fox Islands in the Aleutian chain, including Unimak Pass, and feeding grounds near Kodiak Island.

On September 26, 2023, NOAA issued its "12 Month Finding" in response to the CBD's Petition, concluding in part:

"Given the acoustic detections and sightings supporting North Pacific right whales' use of areas outside of the currently designated critical habitat and the recent shifts in the essential features of critical habitat (i.e., certain zooplankton species), we intend to revise critical habitat."

Recovery plan

In June 2013, NOAA issued a formal "Recovery Plan for the North Pacific Right Whale" pursuant to the Endangered Species Act. The Recovery Plan describes the current state of scientific knowledge of the species and the threats to its continued survival. The Plan also contains proposed conservation measures, which mainly consist of research proposals, including passive acoustic monitoring, satellite tagging, and a review of historic whaling logbooks.

Canadian regulation

In Canada, some right whales were caught in the early 20th century at whaling stations off northern Vancouver Island. There had been no sightings of right whales in Canadian waters since the large illegal Soviet kill in the 1960s with two exceptions of a pair confirmed off Haida Gwaii at – in 1970 and two large whales seen on Swiftsure Bank off Strait of Juan de Fuca in 1983, though their species was unconfirmed. There were no officially-confirmed records until the sighting of a single right whale on June 9 and 13, 2013, south of Langara Island at the north end of the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii), in British Columbia (~ 54°N, 132°W) followed by the second sighting of a different individual at the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca four months later. Furthermore, a possible right whale was observed by a naturalist at the milepost 8 nearby Kydaka Point in October, 2014.

In 2003, Fisheries and Oceans Canada issued a National Recovery Strategy for E. japonica in Pacific Canadian Waters. In 2012, Fisheries and Oceans Canada issued an analysis of critical habitat for North Pacific right whales, and blue, fin and sei whales in British Columbia. In 2013, Fisheries and Oceans Canada issued a "Draft Partial Action Plan for Blue, Fin, Sei and North Pacific Right Whales (Balaenoptera musculus, B. physalus, B. borealis, and Eubalaena japonica) in Pacific Canadian Waters".

History of whaling

Whaling before 1835

thumb|upright=2|left|A portrait illustrating typical net-whaling industry of [[Taiji, Wakayama|Taiji in Japan]]

In Japan, hunting for right whales dates back at least to the 16th century, although stranded whales had been used for centuries before then. In 1675, Yoriharu Wada invented a new method of whaling, entangling the animals in nets before harpooning them. Initially, the nets were made of straw, later replaced by the stronger hemp. A hunting group consisted of 15–20 Seko-bune or "beater" boats, 6 Ami-bune or netting boats, and 4 Mosso-bune or tugboats, for a total of 30–35 boats with crews totaling about 400. In addition to right whales, they took gray whales and humpback whales.

The Nootka, Makah, Quileute, and Quinault tribes of Vancouver Island and the coast of Washington were also skilled whalers of the gray and humpback whales. Right whales were rare in their catches.

The focus of the North Pacific whaling fleet on right whales ended soon after 1848, when a whaler ventured through the Bering Straits and discovered unexploited populations of bowhead whales. Being more abundant, easier to capture, and yielding far more baleen, the majority of whalers rapidly switched to hunting bowheads. Since bowheads range further north than right whales, hunting pressure on right whales declined rapidly.

After the official protection

The later "factory ships" that processed carcasses while at sea further transformed pelagic whaling. Right whales continued to be taken, although uncommonly, due to their rarity. Japan continued hunting right whales through the beginning of World War II. Afterward, General Douglas MacArthur, head of Allied occupation forces, encouraged the Japanese to resume whaling to feed their hungry population. Japan then joined the International Whaling Commission, which barred the hunting of right whales. Except for 13 killed under "scientific permits", in accordance with IWC rules, Japanese whalers have honored this prohibition.

thumb|Skeleton of the Kumomi specimen

Possibly, several hundred whales (mostly unreported or unrecorded) were taken by Japanese until the late-1970s, including mass captures off southeastern Hokkaido and off Akkeshi. (although majority of medias even the museum itself claim that people tried their best to save the whale who stranded him/herself). A local museum (雲見くじら館) was later built specifically to display the animal's carcass. In the late 1970s, at least two cow-calf pairs were confirmed during cetacean surveys by Institute of Cetacean Research in very nearby area of Suruga Bay and off Bentenjima Island in Enshunada Sea, and another whale was observed in the same area (Kumomi) in 1996 as well. and Korean whalers. At least two whales were taken off Haiyang in the Yellow Sea by Japanese whalers in 1944. Another pair was also taken by Japanese whalers in the north of the island in January 1973, where both of these were later made to be specimens, where the smaller specimen became the only specimen (with skins and baleens) of the species in the world at the Dalian Natural History Museum, and the larger individual is now on the Zhejiang Museum of Natural History. reaching around 16–17.1m, and were later made to be specimens for exhibition at several locations. Last record of the species in the nation was of a single whale being killed in the south of Haiyang Island in December 1977. There have been no confirmed records along Chinese coasts targeting right whales since the last catch (or a sighting) in 1977. Many of these captured individuals were rather large individuals as reaching around 16 m (52.5 ft), and were later made to be specimens for exhibition at several locations. There have also been an unknown number of modern catches off Taiwan as well. The Soviet government then filed fraudulent reports with the Bureau of International Whaling Statistics and the International Whaling Commission, admitting killing during this period only one right whale, by accident.

These Soviet infractions remained a state secret for four decades. In many instances, the Russian biologists who had been on the whaling ships were prohibited from examining the carcasses or taking any biological measurements of these whales. Nevertheless, several biologists kept their own records of what the whalers caught, then kept these records secret. After the collapse of the Soviet government, the new Russian government released at least part of the true catch data.

Doroshenko did not have information on catches by a third Soviet whaling fleet, the Sovetskaya Rossiya, operating in the Gulf of Alaska in 1962–1963, which caught 142 right whales in addition to the 372 previously reported. Of the whales killed by the Sovetskaya Rossiya fleet, 112 were killed in June 1963 in the central and northern Gulf of Alaska.

Since the 2012 accounting for illegally caught whales was published, the principal analyst for that study has increased her estimate of the total North Pacific right whales caught by the Soviet whalers in the North Pacific and Sea of Okhotsk from 661 whales to a new total of 765 whales, but details of the distribution of those additional whales are not yet published.

See also

• List of cetaceans

References

External links

• NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service, Office of Protected Resources, North Pacific Right Whale
• (Final) Recovery Plan for the North Pacific Right Whale, NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service, Office of Protected Resources
• The North Pacific Right Whale (Eubalaena japonica) – the most endangered whale – Jim Scarff's Eclectic Home Page
• Fact sheet on right whales for kids
• Center for Biological Diversity – Right Whale page
• Voices in the Sea – Sounds of the North Pacific Right Whale
• North Pacific Research Board – In Search of the Right Whale Nursery