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Northern Right
Whale
Distribution & Migration
Right whales occur in the
Aleutian
Islands and Kamchatka to Japan especially near the Kuril
Islands and Okhotsk Sea, and there are a few reports from
Hawaii (Wilson and Ruff 1999). They have also been seen off
the coast of Baja California, and the USA including Alaska
(Goddard and Rugh 1998, LeDuc 2001, LeDuc et al. 2004). It
has not been seen in
British Columbia for over fifty years although it was taken there by
whalers in the past (Nichols et al. 2002).
Important areas in Alaska are the southeastern Bering Sea
slope and shelf, eastern Aleutian Islands, and Gulf of Alaska
slope and abyssal plain. Since 1980, the only area where right
whales have been seen consistently is on the middle-shelf of
the
southeastern Bering Sea (Shelden et al. 2005). Townsend
(1935) drew a
map (reproduced at the bottom of the Vancouver Aquarium
page) of whaling station catches of
8,415
right whales between 1785 and 1913. It shows most of the
catches in April to July occurred in the Gulf of Alaska and
most of the August to October catches were made in the Bering
Sea. The southern catches in autumn were made far out to sea
almost due west of San Francisco and might indicate a
hsitorical migration route towards the Hawaiian Islands or
beyond.
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