NORTH PACIFIC RIGHT WHALES IN THE SOUTHEASTERN BERING SEA

The North Pacific right whale (NPRW) was heavily hunted between the 17
th
and the 20
th
centuries, when it ceased to be the principal target of commercial whaling (Omura, 1986; Scarff,
1986, 2001; IWC, 2001; Clapham et al., 2004). Protection was supposedly afforded by
international treaties in the 1930s and 1940s, but the illegal harvest of hundreds of individuals by
the Soviet Union, primarily in the 1960s (e.g. Doroshenko, 2000; Ivashchenko et al., 2011,
Ivashchenko and Clapham, 2012) drastically impacted the recovery of the species.
After some debate and a failed attempt by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)
to list the NPRW as a unique species, genetic work by Rosenbaum et al (2000) and Gaines et al
(2005) demonstrated that the NPRW (Eubalaena japonica) is a separate species from the North
Atlantic (Eubalaena glacialis) and southern (Eubalaena australis) right whales. The official
species designation by NMFS was implemented in March 2008 (73 FR 12024, 06 March 2008).
One month later, in accordance with the Endangered Species Act (ESA) mandates, NMFS
designated a NPRW Critical Habitat (73 FR 19000, 08 April 2008) in the southeastern Bering
Sea (SEBS; Figure 1), and one just south of Kodiak Island, Alaska. The location of these habitat
designations was based on NPRW sighting densities after 1996 (73 FR 19000, 08 April 2008).
Any activity that may affect the critical habitat (including, but not limited to, oil and gas
exploration or drilling, fishing, mining, pollutant discharge, and military training) must complete
an ESA Section 7 consultation through NMFS.
The existence of two discrete stocks of NPRWs has been proposed: a western population
that is found in the Okhotsk Sea and in the north-western North Pacific Ocean, and an eastern
population that spends the summer in the SEBS and the Gulf of Alaska (GOA) (Clapham et al.,
2004; Shelden et al., 2005). The eastern stock was heavily exploited by pelagic whalers
beginning in 1835, and the population was seriously depleted by 1900 (Brownell et al., 2001;
Scarff, 2001). Sighting data from the mid-20th century suggested that a slow recovery was
occurring (Brownell et al., 2001). However, the illegal killing of 529 whales by Soviet whaling
fleets in the Bering Sea and the GOA in the 1960s drove this population to near-extinction and
may have compromised its long-term chances of recovery (Brownell et al., 2001; Ivashchenko
and Clapham, 2012).
Today, the eastern population of the NPRW is the most endangered stock of large whales
in the world (Clapham, 1999). Recent abundance estimates based on photo-identification and
genetic mark-recapture data collected during this and other projects suggest that nearly 30
individuals inhabit the southeastern Bering Sea at present, only a third of which are are females
(Wade et al., 2011).
Historical data suggest that NPRWs had an extensive offshore distribution in their
feeding grounds in the BS and GOA (Townsend, 1935; Scarff, 1986; 2001; Clapham et al., 2004;
Shelden et al., 2005; Ivashchenko and Clapham, 2012). Currently, the few remaining whales in
the eastern stock are only a remnant of the former population, and may not fully occupy the same
range they did two centuries ago (Clapham et al., 2004). In fact, modern sightings and acoustic
detections of NPRWs have been reported in the SEBS (Goddard and Rugh 1998; LeDuc et al.,
2001; Tynan et al., 2001; Wade et al., 2006) and, more rarely, in the northwestern GOA (Waite
et al., 2003; Mellinger et al., 2004