Everitt (NMML, Seattle) photographed three whales lying at 

 the surface with their mouths wide open at right angles to the 

 wind and tide. If they were feeding, and we believe they were 

 as this incident coincided with a large bloom and onshore 

 movement of euphausiids, then this is the first known case of 

 a whale passively feeding. 



Eskimo whalers hunt for whales west of long. 150°W. 

 Four whales were taken in the channel between Tapkaluk 

 and Cooper Islands (lat. 71 51'N, long. 155°40'W) 29 Sep- 

 tember^ October 1974. Whether the nearshore waters west 

 of long. 150°W are more important to this population than 

 east of long. 150°W has not been determined, but we believe 

 that they are. 



Bowheads have been seen in the autumn in shallow water 

 of 3-12 m deep in the U.S. Beaufort Sea (Fig. 30, and Fraker 

 and Bockstoce 1980). Bodfish (1936) found bowheads consis- 

 tently at water depths < 40 m, but not deeper. Between 

 August and November 1974-78, we have scored 234 sightings 

 of bowheads in the Beaufort and eastern Chukchi Seas near 

 Point Barrow: 172 were in water < 12 m deep, and 62 in 

 water > 12 m (Fig. 30). The 12 m contour east of Point Bar- 

 row averages < 5 km offshore and 2 km off the Plover 

 Islands. More of our aerial survey effort was conducted off- 

 shore near the 12 m contour rather than nearer to shore. The 

 nearshore waters here appear to be more important for feed- 

 ing whales than are waters further offshore. 



(Durham footnote 10; Rice 1977; A. Brower, Sr. footnote 25). 

 The profusion of terms describing these whales appears to be 

 based upon historic and cultural usage. 



Geographic Isolation 



Bowheads now in the western Arctic-Bering Sea stock may 

 be isolated from the Atlantic and/or Okhotsk stocks, and 

 morphologically differences among stocks may explain the ex- 

 istence of the ingutuk. Townsend's (1935) and Bockstoce and 

 Botkin's (footnote 13) harvest records indicate that while the 

 Okhotsk and western Arctic-Bering Sea stocks are now iso- 

 lated, this may not have been so > 100 yr ago. This would not 

 seem enough time for genetic-morphological changes to occur. 

 No diagnostic differences have been described between Atlan- 

 tic and Pacific stocks (Scoresby 1820; Eschricht and Reinhardt 

 1866; Scammon 1874), and although detailed recent morpho- 

 logical data are not available for comparison among stocks, 

 geographic isolation leading to new morphological types reen- 

 tering the population cannot be ruled out. 



Biological Evidence 



A Question of Species Identity: Bowhead, 

 Ingutuk, Right Whale? 



During spring 1978 a controversy developed over whether 

 two species of right whale (of the genus Baiaena = Eubalaena) 

 were present during the bowhead whale migration along the 

 northwest coast of Alaska. Discussion at that time centered 

 around the belief that a small, early spring "Arctic ice whale," 

 called ingutuk, was the Pacific right whale, Baiaena glacialis, 

 rather than the bowhead whale, Baiaena mysticetus. This led 

 to the further concern that two endangered right whales, as 

 well as the California stock of gray whales, Eschrichtius ro- 

 bustus, seasonally frequent the Beaufort Sea OCS lease area. 

 The following evidence may resolve the issue (discussed in 

 detail in Braham et al. 1980a). 



Morphological Features 



Some 22 morphological and behavioral features have been 

 used to describe the differences between bowheads and ingu- 

 tuks. After evaluating these characters with results of our re- 

 search since 1973, and using information compiled by Durham 

 (footnote 10) and Foote (footnote 21), we found that 14 

 (61 %) of the characters were not unique to ingutuks, and 

 that 4 (18%) of the characters could not be classified to 

 either. Only 4 (18%) seemed to be positive ingutuk character- 

 istics. These data do not exclude the possibility that the ingu- 

 tuk represents one extreme of normal variation. An occa- 

 sional whale with features usually attributed only to ingutuk, 

 usingwachaek, or kyralik have been reported (Durham foot- 

 note 10), suggesting that a range of features may occur with- 

 in individuals as well as within the (bowhead) population. 



Historical Evidence 



Nomenclature 



The question of taxonomic placement of the ingutuk is not 

 new: Hadley (1915), Brower (1942), and Jim Allen in Bailey 

 and Hendee (1926) thought ingutuks were not the same species 

 as bowheads. The term ingutuk, an Eskimo word thought to 

 refer specifically to young, fat, perhaps female, bowheads, is 

 one of several terms commonly used to describe differing age 

 and/or size categories of agvik — the bowhead whale. The term 

 ingutuvuk ("one who carries a calf") describes a large female; 

 usingwachaek is a full-sized bowhead; kairalik, kiyralivuk, 

 and kivralivoak refer to different sizes of male bowheads 58 



'"'Eskimo whaling al Barrow." an anonymously auihored manuscript dated 

 12 December 1972, "compiled by ihe Naval Arctic Research Laboratory, Bar- 

 ron . Alaska, for use bv Dr. Floyd Durham." 



Sex and Size Categorization 



There is belief by some Alaskan Eskimos that ingutuks are 

 young female bowheads. Prior to 1978 only one of many ingu- 

 tuks taken since 1962 was reported to be a male; all others were 

 females. Since 1978, three males have been reported. Since 

 1973 we have identified 14 ingutuksout of 1 12 bowheads taken 

 at Point Hope and Barrow. Ten of the ingutuks were female, 3 

 were males, and 1 was not satisfactorily sexed. The sex ratio of 

 non-ingutuk bowheads from 1973 to 1978 was 46 females to 

 53 males. Significantly fewer male than female ingutuks have 

 been taken, suggesting that '"ingutuk" may be a female sex- 

 related trait or term. Ingutuks have been reported to be 

 smaller than bowheads; however, we found no significant 

 difference. This test included all size classes of usingwachaek 

 (= kiyralik), ingutuk, and ingutuvuk (= large ingutukl). 



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