Eschrichtius robustus
– Lower Risk Conservation Dependent
Taxonomy
Assessment Information
|
Red List Category & Criteria:
|
LR/cd ver 2.3 (1994)
|
|
Year Assessed:
|
1996
|
|
Annotations:
|
Needs updating
|
|
Assessor/s:
|
Cetacean Specialist Group
|
|
Justification:
|
Extract from Reeves et al. (2003, p. 37): "The Gray Whale was extirpated from the North Atlantic within the last 300–400 years, so the only extant representatives of the family Eschrichtiidae are the Gray Whales in the North Pacific. The Western Pacific stock, which may number no more than about 100 individuals, was reclassified in the 2000 IUCN Red List from Endangered to Critically Endangered (under the 1996 categories and criteria). Its principal summer feeding area is off Sakhalin Island in the Russian sector of the Okhotsk Sea, where a major oil and gas field is being developed by a multinational energy consortium (Weller et al. 2002). The annual migration takes these whales into coastal waters of Japan, Korea, and China, where they are vulnerable to ship collisions and entanglement in fishing gear. Moreover, a female from this population was found on a Japanese beach in 1996 bearing several harpoons of the kind used in the Dall’s porpoise hunt off Japan (Brownell and Kasuya 1999, Baker et al. 2002). This incident demonstrates that the western Pacific population is at risk from illegal hunting.
The eastern stock of more than 21,000 has been growing steadily in spite of an annual hunt in Russia governed by an IWC quota (Buckland and Breiwick 2002). In recent years, however, this population has experienced an unprecedented amount of mortality on its migration route and in the winter breeding areas, and exhibited a decline in calf production (Le Boeuf et al. 2000). There is concern that these trends, should they persist, could lead to a significant decline in abundance of the Eastern Pacific stock."
|
Geographic Range
|
Range Description:
|
"The Gray Whale became extinct in the North Atlantic in early historical times but survives in the North Pacific, where there are two geographically separated populations." (Rice 1998)
|
|
Countries:
|
Native:
Canada; China; Japan; Korea, Democratic People's Republic of; Korea, Republic of; Mexico; Russian Federation; United States
Regionally extinct:
Belgium; Iceland; Netherlands; Sweden; United Kingdom
|
|
FAO Marine Fishing Areas:
|
Native:
Arctic Sea; Pacific-northeast; Pacific-northwest; Pacific-western central
Regionally extinct:
Atlantic-northeast; Atlantic-northwest; Atlantic-western central
|
Habitat and Ecology
