HUMPBACK WHALE (Megaptera novaeangliae): Eastern North Pacific Stock STOCK DEFINITION AND GEOGRAPHIC RANGE Although the International Whaling Commission

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bering Sea or Aleutian Islands. This stock structure; Bering Sea; Pacific; Humpback Whale; Megaptera novaeangliae; Aleutian Islands
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.294.9361; http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/sars/po2002whhb-en.pdf

(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). Aerial, vessel, and photo-identification surveys, and genetic analyses indicate that within the U.S. EEZ, there are at least three relatively separate populations that migrate between their respective summer/fall feeding areas and winter/spring calving and mating areas (Calambokidis et al. 2001, Baker et al. 1998): 1) winter/spring populations in coastal Central America and Mexico which migrate to the coast of California to southern British Columbia in summer/fall (Steiger et al. 1991, Calambokidis et al. 1993)- referred to as the eastern North Pacific stock (Figure 1); 2) winter/spring populations of the Hawaiian Islands which migrate to northern British