Bowhead whale - Population & Distribution

A predilection for the freezing waters of the Arctic

Previous Population and Distribution
It is estimated there once were four distinct populations of bowheads. When the bowhead became rare off Greenland in the early 1700s, the hunting focus shifted to the west of the island. Areas between Greenland and eastern Canada also became overexploited by the mid-nineteenth century, followed by whales in the Bering Sea.

Current Population and Distribution
These whales are found in the waters of the Arctic Ocean, the Sea of Okhotsk, Hudson Bay and the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada, and the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort seas between Alaska and Russia.

They migrate within these waters rather than moving seasonally to more temperate waters like other great whales. The fact that they stay in the Arctic year-round, moving between summer feeding and wintering areas, make bowheads one of only three whale species that spend their entire lives in the Arctic.

There are thought to be around 10,000 individuals of this species. Less than 100 probably remain in the Svalbard-Barents Sea (Spitsbergen), a population classified as Critically Endangered by the IUCN, and 150-200 in the Okhotsk Sea. Other populations such as the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort stock and the Davis Strait-Baffin Bay and Hudson Bay-Foxe Basin stocks are hunted by indigenous people in Canada and Russia.

Long-term monitoring efforts of the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort population indicate that the population has been increasing in the 1980s and early 1990s, despite ongoing hunting. There is no information on other bowhead population trends.