STOCK DEFINITION AND GEOGRAPHIC RANGE

• Main Author: Nova Scotia Stock
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2007
• Subjects: Nantucket; Newfoundland; Labrador Sea; North Atlantic; Northwest Atlantic; Sei Whale
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.294.9179; http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/sars/ao2007whse-ns.pdf

Mitchell and Chapman (1977) reviewed the sparse evidence on stock identity of northwest Atlantic sei whales, and suggested two stocks- a Nova Scotia stock and a Labrador Sea stock. The range of the Nova Scotia stock includes the continental shelf waters of the northeastern U.S., and extends northeastward to south of Newfoundland. The Scientific Committee of the IWC, while adopting these general boundaries, noted that the stock identity of sei whales (and indeed all North Atlantic whales) was a major research problem (Donovan 1991). In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the proposed IWC stock definition is provisionally adopted, and the “Nova Scotia stock ” is used here as the management unit for this stock assessment. The IWC boundaries for this stock are from the U.S. east coast to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, thence east to longitude 42 o W. Indications are that, at least during the feeding season, a major portion of the Nova Scotia sei whale stock is centered in northerly waters, perhaps on the Scotian Shelf (Mitchell and Chapman 1977). The southern portion of the species ' range during spring and summer includes the northern portions of the U.S. Atlantic Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)- the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank. The period of greatest abundance there is spring, with sightings concentrated along the eastern margin of Georges Bank and into the Northeast Channel area, and along the southwestern edge of Georges Bank in the area of Hydrographer Canyon (CETAP 1982). NMFS aerial surveys in 1999, 2000 and 2001 found concentrations of sei and right whales along the Northern Edge of Georges Bank in the spring. The sei whale is often found in the deeper waters characteristic of the continental shelf edge region (Hain et al. 1985), and NMFS aerial surveys found substantial numbers of sei whales in this region, south of Nantucket, in the spring of 2001. Similarly, Mitchell (1975) reported that sei whales off Nova Scotia were often distributed closer to the 2,000 m depth contour than were fin whales.