STOCK DEFINITION AND GEOGRAPHIC RANGE Although the International Whaling

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bering Sea; Pacific; Humpback Whale; Alaska
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.233.6210; http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/sars/po2010whhb-cow.pdf

Commission (IWC) only considered one stock (Donovan 1991), there is now good evidence for multiple populations of humpback whales in the North Pacific (Johnson and Wolman 1984; Baker et al. 1990). Humpback whales in the North Pacific feed in coastal waters from California to Russia and in the Bering Sea. They migrate south to wintering destinations off Mexico, Central America, Hawaii, southern Japan, and the Philippines. Mitochondrial and nuclear genetic markers show that considerable structure exists in humpback whale populations in the North Pacific (Baker et al. 1998). Significant levels of mitochondrial and nuclear genetic differences were found between central California and Southeast Alaska feeding areas (Baker et al. 1998).