STOCK DEFINITION AND GEOGRAPHIC RANGE Although the International Whaling 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). Aerial, vessel, and photo-identification surveys, and genetic analyses indicate that within the U.S. EEZ, there ar...
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.295.74 http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/sars/po2000whhb-en.pdf |
| Summary: | (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. 1997, 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 California/ Oregon/Washington- Mexico stock (Figure 1); 2) winter/spring populations of the Hawaiian Islands which migrate to northern British Columbia/Southeast Alaska and Prince William Sound west to Kodiak (Baker et al. 1990 |
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