kanaloa

Bowhead Whales

Bowhead Whale

(Balaena mysticetus)

Bowhead Whales formerly ranged from Spitsbergen westward to eastern Siberia, approaching the pack jce around the North Pole in summer, and moving southward again in the fall .Today the few remaining Bowheads appear in Bering Strait in June and proceed eastward to the mouth of the Mackenzie River, and Baillie and Banks Islands.
From September to November, depending on ice conditions, they pass Point Barrow, Alaska, and spend the winter months in drifting field ice about the Aleutians and the Kurile Islands north of Japan.
Bowheads were hunted almost to extinction in the North Atlantic between 1612 and 1887, but meanwhile a new fishery was opened up in Bering Sea and the neighboring Arctic regions in 1848. Notwithstanding many setbacks, including the burning of whaling vessels in Bering Sea during the Civil War by the Confederate privateer Shenandoah, and the destruction by pack ice of the entire Arctic fleet in 1871 and 1877, whaling was continued on a rapidly diminishing scale in these waters for many years thereafter.

In 1897 the prices quoted at San Francisco, California, were $4 a pound for whalebone and 30 cents a gallon for whale oil. The average yield of a Bowhead was from 1,500 to 1,700 pounds of whalebone and from 70 to 90 barrels of oil, worth in all about $8,000.
This smooth-throated whale measures from 50 to 65 feet in length. Adults are velvety black, except for the small ash-colored area at the tip of the lower jaws, the cream-colored chin and throat, and, occasionally, white or piebald under parts. Immature individuals are bluish black and the calves are bluish gray.
The gigantic mouth is provided on each side with a row of about 360 long, narrow, closely spaced blades of whalebone, attached at one end to the gum of the upper jaw. The blades near the middle of each row are the longest, sometimes nearly 12 feet, but decrease gradually toward each end of the row down to a few inches.
The newborn calf is rarely longer than 14 or 15 feet, and is nursed for about a year.

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