Revised 10/31/2002 (new stock) HARBOR PORPOISE (Phocoena phocoena): San Francisco-Russian River Stock

• Main Authors: Stock Definition, Geographic Range, Southern Oregon, Morro Bay, Cape Blanco, Cape Mendocino
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Barlow; British Columbia; Canada; Chivers; Pacific; Kamchatka; Phocoena phocoena; Alaska
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.294.8675; http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/sars/po2002poha-rr.pdf

In the Pacific, harbor porpoise are found in coastal and inland waters from Point Conception, California to Alaska and across to Kamchatka and Japan (Gaskin 1984). Harbor porpoise appear to have more restricted movements along the western coast of the continental U.S. than along the eastern coast. Regional differences in pollutant residues in harbor porpoise indicate that they do not move extensively between California, Oregon, and Washington (Calambokidis and Barlow 1991). That study also showed some regional differences within California (although the sample size was small). This pattern stands as a sharp contrast to the eastern coast of the U.S. and Canada where harbor porpoise are believed to migrate seasonally from as far south as the Carolinas to the Gulf of Maine and Bay of Fundy (Polacheck et al. 1995). A phylogeographic analysis of genetic data from northeast Pacific harbor porpoise did not show complete concordance between DNA sequence types and geographic location (Rosel 1992). However, an analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) of the same data with additional samples found significant genetic differences for four of the six pair-wise comparisons between the four areas investigated: California, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska (Rosel et al. 1995). These results demonstrate that harbor porpoise along the west coast of North America are not panmictic or migratory, and movement is sufficiently restricted that genetic differences have evolved. Recent preliminary genetic analyses of samples ranging from Monterey Bay, California to Vancouver Island, British Columbia indicate that there is small-scale subdivision within the U.S. portion of this range (Chivers et al., 2002). N44.0 N42.0