Rarest of All Endangered Whales Found in North Pacific

KODIAK, Alaska, October 4, 2004 (ENS) - Whale researchers out on the Pacific Ocean as part of an international count of humpback whales are enjoying success with other species far more rare than humpbacks.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries said Friday in Kodiak, Alaska, that they have nearly doubled the count of critically endangered right whales in the Bering Sea in two days of whale research.

Scientists on the NOAA Research Vessel McArthur II say they have now documented at least 25 eastern North Pacific right whales - up from the 13 individuals known before last week's sightings.

“We saw more right whales in the Bering Sea than have been documented in the last five years combined,” said Robert Pitman, NOAA Fisheries marine scientist. “More importantly, we also saw three cow and calf pairs. Not only is the population bigger than we thought, but it may actually be growing.”

One of the eastern North Pacific right whales found by scientists last week. (Photo courtesy NOAA Fisheries)

Following international protection in 1931, sighting records indicate there was a small but recovering population of right whales in the eastern North Pacific.

But the whale scientists say illegal takes of right whales by foreign commercial whaling vessels in the 1960s reduced the population to a critically low level.

Since then, sightings of right whales have been extremely rare in the eastern North Pacific, and there have been concerns that the population was headed for extinction.

“In 2002, scientists documented a sighting of a right whale calf in the Bering Sea for the first time in more than a century,” said NOAA Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher. “Although Bering Sea right whales remain severely endangered, each new individual whale we find, especially a calf, gives us hope for their survival.”

Scientists took 20 biopsies, small snips of skin and blubber, that will give an individual genetic record and positive identification of individual whales in the group spotted.

From a plug of skin the size of a pencil eraser, researchers at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California will determine a minimum number of individuals present in the population, the sex of each whale sampled, how many of the females were pregnant and how genetically distinct the eastern North Pacific population might be.

Guided by satellite tags that scientists placed on two of the right whales earlier this summer, researchers sighted the whale group in the southeastern Bering Sea just south of an area where most North Pacific right whales have been sighted in the last decade.

During all daylight hours, whale researchers aboard the McArthur II scan the sea with binoculars for whales. In addition, acoustic researchers deploy underwater listening devices to listen for right whale calls. When calls are heard, the researchers can calculate a bearing towards the calls to lead the ship to the location of the whales.

The whale researchers on the McArthur II are participating in the Alaska summer leg of a three year international research effort known as SPLASH - Structure of Populations, Level of Abundance, and Status of Humpbacks.

The SPLASH project involves NOAA scientists along with dozens of other researchers from the United States, Japan, Russia, Mexico, Canada, the Philippines, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua and Guatemala. It is designed as a systematic survey to estimate the number of humpback whales in the North Pacific.

A blue whale photographed by researchers aboard the McArthur II (Photo courtesy NOAA)

Scientists saw the first blue whale about 100 nautical miles southeast of Prince William Sound where the ocean is about two miles deep. The next day, two more blue whales were sighted a little further offshore, about 150 nautical miles southeast of Prince William Sound. The sightings were in an area where blue whales were commonly harpooned by whalers.

Researchers were able to get close enough to the giant blue whales to get biopsies for genetic testing and pollutant studies.

"For whale researchers, this is huge," said Dr. Jay Barlow, NOAA's chief scientist on the research cruise. "There have been many marine mammal surveys in Alaska by ship and aircraft, and countless years of small boat research on humpback whales in Alaska, and yet, these are the first fully documented sightings of blue whales here in the past three decades."

Tracking of the satellite-monitored movements of two tagged right whales: http://nmml.afsc.noaa.gov/CetaceanAssessment/right/righttagtrackmap.htm