Revised 6/4/2014 BLUE WHALE (Balaenoptera musculus musculus): Central North Pacific Stock

• Main Authors: Stock Definition, Geographic Range
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Baja; Gulf of Alaska; Pacific; Reeves; Balaenoptera musculus; Blue whale; Alaska
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.566.7879; http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/sars/2013/po2013_bluewhale-cnp.pdf

(IWC) has formally considered only one management stock for blue whales in the North Pacific (Donovan 1991), but up to five populations have been proposed (Reeves et al. 1998). Rice (1974) hypothesized that blue whales from Baja California migrated far offshore to feed in the eastern Aleutians or Gulf of Alaska and returned to feed in California waters; though more recently concluded that the California population is separate from the Gulf of Alaska population (Rice 1992). Length frequency analyses (Gilpatrick et al. 1996) and photo-identification studies (Calambokidis et al. 1995) through the