Ri^ht whales, EuhoLicna glaiialts I Borowski. 1781 i. are the most 

 endangered of the world's whales. A prime quarry of vankee whalers 

 everv^vhere. right whales were hunted relentlessly m the seventeenth, 

 eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the North Pacific, such hunt- 

 ing was most intense in the Bering Sea, north temperate North Pacific 

 and Gult ot Alaska, hut, as Scammon reported, some right whales were 

 taken "from February to .■\pril as tar south as Bahia Sebastian Vizcaino 

 and near Cedros Island". We have located further unpublished records, 

 from 19th century whaling logs, which document sightings and chases 

 of right whales east of Guadalupe Island in April of 1856. Collectively 

 these few records demonstrate that before the populations were se- 

 verely depleted by whaling, right whales once occurred from at least as 

 far south as central Baja California north to Arctic waters. A few were 

 encountered and killed by shore whalers operating from San Diego Bay 

 in the years 1850-1870. Other sightings and cathes in the eastern North 

 Pacific, as plotted b\- Maur\', Tounsend and others, were mostly in the 

 Gulf of Alaska and northern North Pacific, tending to be progressively 

 farther seaward as one moves south of most important whaling 

 grounds. Movements of right whales between summer and winter 

 grounds, including those off Baja California, presumably placed some 

 right whales, at least seasonally, in or near the SCB and CINMS. 



By some accounts, right whales may never have been very abundant 

 in the northeastern Pacific. According to Scammon, by 1874 they were 

 already considered rare and sightings and takes were exceptional. 

 Nevertheless, whalers, operating from yankee whale boats, shore 

 stations and, later, pelagic fleets continued to take right whales when- 

 ever the\' found them until the species was protected b\- international 

 convention in 19^6. We know of ten right whales taken from the 

 eastern North Pacific and southern Bering Sea after 19)5 — one 

 "accidentally" killed in 1951 off British Columbia by Canadian-based 

 shore whalers and nine killed in waters off the .Alaska Peninsula and 

 eastern Aleutian Islands by Japanese whalers operating under special 

 permits between 1956 and 1968. 



For the eastern North Pacific south of latitude 55 N there are few 

 records of right whales from this century; one killed in 1924 near the 

 Farallon Islands, one stranded in 1916 on Santa Cruz Island, and J5 

 sightings representing a total of 71 individuals. Among these last are 

 two observations in the SCB, solitary whales headed southbound off 

 La JoUa in March 1955 and in the eastern Santa Barbara Channel in 

 April 1981. This more recent observation is particularly exciting, 

 especially considering the apparently desperate status of the American 

 stock of right whales (there are two other apparently isolated stocks of 

 right whales in the North Pacific, the Asiatic-Pacific Ocean and 

 Asiatic-Okhotsk Sea), There are believed to be no more than 200, 

 perhaps fewer than 80, right whales in the entire North Pacific. Most of 

 those are in the Okhotsk Sea. This has prompted the IWC to write 

 that ". . . apart from the remnant of the Okhotsk Sea stock . . . the 

 continued e.\istence of viable stocks of right whales in the rest of the 

 North Pacific is in doubt." Any stragglers from the remnants of the 

 American stock using waters south of Point Conception would be 

 expected in the SCB primarily in winter and early spring months. 



Figure 18. North Pacific right whales are probably the rarest and most 

 endangered cetaceans in the world. This surprising sighting east of Anacapa 

 Island m April 1981 is one of only three records ot the speices in the SCB m 

 this century. (Photos by John Strickley.) 



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