FIN WHALE (Balaenoptera physalus): Western North Atlantic Stock

The Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has proposed stock boundaries for North Atlantic fin whales. Fin whales off the eastern U.S., north to Nova Scotia and on to the southeast coast of Newfoundland are believed to constitute a single stock under the present IWC sche...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Stock Definition, Geographic Range
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 1998
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.294.8633
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/sars/ao1998whfn-wn.pdf
Description
Summary:The Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has proposed stock boundaries for North Atlantic fin whales. Fin whales off the eastern U.S., north to Nova Scotia and on to the southeast coast of Newfoundland are believed to constitute a single stock under the present IWC scheme (Donovan 1991). However, the stock identity of North Atlantic fin whales has received relatively little attention, and whether the current stock boundaries define biologically isolated units has long been uncertain. The existence of a subpopulation structure was suggested by local depletions that resulted from commercial overharvesting (Mizroch et al. 1984). A genetic study conducted by Bérubé et al. (1998) using both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA provided