MEDIUM-SIZED CETACEANS (to 15 meters maximum length) 



This section includes one baleen whale, the minke. and eight 

 toothed whales. Ot these latter, only three are seen in significant 



frequency in the SCB. The others are rarely seen or positively 

 identified m the area. 



RiSIDENTS AND COMMON MIGRANTS 



MiNKE Wh.^LE 

 Bahunoptera acHlorostrata Lacepede, 1804 



Although the mmke whale has a world-wide distribution, because 

 of Its small size it was not actively hunted by commercial whalers in 

 most areas until the reduction in populations of larger, more valuable, 

 species (such as right, bowhead, blue, fin and sei whales ) required a 

 shift in whaling locus. In the North Pacific, minke whales were killed, 

 historically, in very small numbers by natives of the Pacific Northwest 

 of North America, especially those at Cape Flatcerv, Washington. 

 Minke whales began to be exploited in the coastal waters of Japan 

 several centuries ago. Whalers used the traditional multiple boat 

 driving and killing methods employed for the larger species. The 

 Norwegian method of whaling using small catcher boats, introduced to 

 Japan in about 1890, was used to take minke whales, but they were not 

 the primary species pursued and did not, until recently, become the 

 object of a focused fishery in Japanese waters. 



Following the introduction of modern catcher boats in Japan in the 

 1920s, the coastal fishery there expanded. Russian pelagic whaling fleets 

 began taking minke whales in 193 5 off the east coast of Kamchatka, m 

 the Bering Sea and in the Arctic Ocean. Japanese pelagic vessels began 

 exploiting minke whales in the Northwest Pacific in ig^o. The 

 annual catch in this last fishery increased slightly through the early 

 1950s, after which it stabilized at about 400 whales. 



The Republic of Korea has used small shore-based catcher boats to 

 harvest whales reported as minkes year-round in the waters off Korea 

 since the late nineteenth century. The catch in that area increased 

 gradually from 170 in 1962 to 596 in 1969; 715 were taken in 1970; 

 between 1971 and 1980 the annual catch fluctuated between 500 and a 

 maximum of 1,05?. Between 1954 and 1982 .it least 22,746 minkes 

 were killed by Japanese and Korean whalers in the Northwest Pacific. 



FlGURJE 19. Minke whales, the sharp-headed finner of whaling literature and the smallest of the rorqual whales, are reportedly relatively common in the 

 SCB. (Photo off Dana Point, April 1981, by B. S. Stewart.^ 



16 



