Eubalaena glacialis

– Endangered

Taxonomy

Kingdom:

ANIMALIA

Phylum:

CHORDATA

Class:

MAMMALIA

Order:

CETACEA

Family:

BALAENIDAE

Scientific Name:

Eubalaena glacialis

Species Authority:

P.L.S. Müller, 1776

Synonym/s:

Eubalaena glacialis P.L.S. Müller, 1776 (North Atlantic stock)

Common Name/s:

English

—

NORTH ATLANTIC RIGHT WHALE

Taxonomic Notes:

Was in the 1996-2002 IUCN Red Lists as the North Atlantic stock of E. glacialis.

Reeves et al. (2003): "Rice (1989) used the genus name Balaena for the Right Whales and recognised only one species, B. glacialis, with two subspecies, B. g. glacialis, the Northern Hemisphere Right Whale, and B. g. australis, the Southern Hemisphere Right Whale. He also noted that populations on the east and west sides of both the North Atalntic and North Pacific were "probably at least partially discrete". Recent genetic analyses support the concept of three separate species, one in the North Atlantic, one in the North Pacific, and one in the Southern Hemisphere (Rosenbaum et al. 2000, IWC 2001b). Also, the IWC Scientific Committee has decided to retain the genus name Eubalaena. North Atlantic and North Pacific stocks of right whales were designated EN in the 1996 Red List, and therefore this status can sensibly be "transferred" to the two species, E. glacialis and E. japonica, respectively."

Assessment Information

Red List Category & Criteria:

EN D ver 2.3 (1994)

Year Assessed:

1996

Annotations:

Needs updating

Assessor/s:

Cetacean Specialist Group

Justification:

Extract from Reeves et al. (2003, p. 33): "The North Atlantic population (Eubalaena glacialis) consists of a remnant of about 300–350 individuals off the east coast of North America. Some members of this population migrate annually to a near-shore winter calving ground off northern Florida and Georgia and then back northward through New England waters and on to summer feeding areas off southeastern Canada. Right Whales are occasionally seen in European waters, but the species is close to extinction in the eastern North Atlantic (Notarbartolo di Sciara et al. 1998). An intensive long-term effort, based primarily at the New England Aquarium in Boston and the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service laboratory in Woods Hole, is underway to monitor the North Atlantic Right Whale population, identify risk factors, and develop and implement measures to reduce human-induced mortality and injury (Katona and Kraus 1999, Right Whale Recovery Team 2000). Recent evidence of decreased survival and reproductive rates indicates that the population may be declining (Caswell et al. 1999)."

This assessement was previously in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species under the name Eubalaena glacialis North Atlantic stock. With the recognition that the North Pacific stock constitutes a different species (E. japonica), the former species level assessment falls away and is replaced by this.

History:

1965	-	"Status inadequately known-survey required or data sought" as E. glacialis (North Atlantic stock) and E. sieboldi (Scott 1965)
1986	-	Endangered (IUCN Conservation Monitoring Centre 1986)
1988	-	Endangered (IUCN Conservation Monitoring Centre 1988)
1990	-	Endangered (IUCN 1990)
1994	-	Endangered (Groombridge 1994)

Geographic Range

Range Description:

"In the North Atlantic, occurs during the summer from Davis Strait, Denmark Strait, and the Norwegian Sea south to Massachusetts and the Bay of Biscay; during the winter ranges south to Florida and the Golfo de Cintra (23°N), Western Sahara; vagrant to the Gulf of Mexico; populations on the American and European sides of the Atlantic are probably at least partially discrete" (Rice 1998).

Countries:

Native:

Bahamas; Belgium; Bermuda; Canada; Faroe Islands; France; Germany; Greenland; Iceland; Ireland; Italy; Morocco; Netherlands; Portugal; Spain; Svalbard and Jan Mayen; United Kingdom; United States

Vagrant:

Mexico

FAO Marine Fishing Areas:

Native:

Atlantic-northwest; Atlantic-western central

Habitat and Ecology

System:

Marine

List of Habitats:

9.1	Marine Neritic - Pelagic
10.1	Marine Oceanic - Epipelagic (0-200m)

Threats

Threats:

Extract from Reeves et al. (2003, p. 34): "In the absence of direct hunts, the most serious continuing threats to Right Whales in the Northern Hemisphere are ship-strikes and entanglement in fishing gear. More than half of the living Right Whales in the western North Atlantic have experienced at least one ship-strike or net entanglement, and at least a third of the deaths in this population each year are thought to be directly linked to human activities (cf. Kraus 1990, Kenney and Kraus 1993, IWC 2001b). Deaths from entanglement in fishing gear have also been documented recently in the western North Pacific (Brownell et al. 2001).

Bibliography

Bibliography:

Brownell Jr., R.L., Clapham, P.J., Miyashita, T. and Kasuya, T. 2001. Conservation status of North Pacific Right Whales. Journal of Cetacean Research and Management (Special Issue) 2, 269–286.

Caswell, H., Fujiwara, M. and Brault, S.1999. Declining survival probability threatens the North Atlantic Rght Whale. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 96: 3308–3313.

Groombridge, B. (ed.) 1994. 1994 IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland.

IUCN Conservation Monitoring Centre. 1986. 1986 IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK.

IUCN Conservation Monitoring Centre. 1988. 1988 IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK.

IUCN. 1990. 1990 IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK.

IWC. 2001. Report of the workshop on the comprehensive assessment of right whales: a worldwide comparison. Journal of Cetacean Research and Management (Special Issue) 2: 1–60.

Katona, S.K. and Kraus, S.D. 1999. Efforts to conserve the North Atlantic Right Whale. In: J.R. Twiss Jr. and R.R. Reeves (eds), Conservation and Management of Marine Mammals, pp. 311-331. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.

Kenney, R.D. and Kraus, S. 1993. Right Whale mortality–a correction and update. Marine Mammal Science 9: 445– 446.

Kraus, S.D. 1990. Rates and potential causes of mortality in North Atlantic Right Whales (Eubalaena glacialis). Marine Mammal Science 6: 278–291.

Notarbartolo di Sciara, G., Politi, E., Bayed, A., Beaubrun, P.-C. and Knowlton, A. 1998. A winter survey off southern Morocco, with a special emphasis on right whales. Report of the International Whaling Commission 48: 547–550.

Reeves, R.R., Smith, B.D., Crespo, E.A. and di Sciara, G.N. (compilers) 2003. Dolphins, Whales and Porpoises: 2002-2010 Conservation Action Plan for the World's Cetaceans. IUCN/SSC Cetacean Specialist Group. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK.

Rice, D.W. 1998. Marine Mammals of the World. Systematics and Distribution. Special Publication Number 4. The Society for Marine Mamalogy, Lawrence, Kansas.

Right Whale Recovery Team. 2000. Canadian North Atlantic Right Whale Recovery Plan. World Wildlife Fund Canada (Toronto) and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (Dartmouth, Nova Scotia). x + 90pp.

Scott, P. (ed.) 1965. Section XIII. Preliminary List of Rare Mammals and Birds. In: The Launching of a New Ark, pp. 15–207. First Report of the President and Trustees of the World Wildlife Fund. An International Foundation for saving the world's wildlife and wild places 1961–1964. Collins, London.

Citation:	Cetacean Specialist Group 1996. Eubalaena glacialis. In: IUCN 2007. 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. <www.iucnredlist.org>. Downloaded on 27 August 2008.
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