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PACIFIC BIOLOGI AL STAT -
•Cetaceans of Canada
U52
no.59
Underwater WQrld
2
Cetaceans of Canada
Randall R. Reeves and Edward Mitchell
Arctic Biological Station
Department of Fisheries and Oceans
555 St. Pierre Boulevard
Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec
H9X 3R4
Cover photograph: A pod of narwhals
in Milne Inlet, Northwest Territories,
on 20 August 1985. It appears that
most members of the pod have large
tusks and thus are adult males. Only
one of them, in the left foreground,
is darkly pigmented with a relatively
short tusk, suggesting it may not be
fully mature. Photograph by Robert R.
Campbell, Department of Fisheries
and Oceans.
I
Figure 1. Water pours off the flukes of
a right whale as it dives near
the New Brunswick coast,
lower Bay of Fundy. Photograph by Porter Turnbull.
Introduction 2
What is a cetacean? 2
Dolphin, porpoise, or whale? 3
Evolutionary origins of cetaceans
Sensory systems 4
Diving 4
Temperature regulation 4
Food and feeding 4
Behavior at the surface 5
3
History of whaling in Canada 5
Early Commercial Whaling 5
Arctic Whaling 5
Modern Commercial Whaling on the
Atlantic Coast 6
Modern Commercial Whaling on the
Pacific Coast 7
Regulation of Whaling 7
Species accounts 7
Right Whale 7
Bowhead 8
Gray Whale 9
Blue Whale 10
Fin Whale II
Sei Whale 12
Minke Whale 12
Humpback Whale 13
Sperm Whales 14
Beaked Whales 15
Killer Whale 16
Long-finned Pilot Whale 17
White Whale or Beluga 17
Narwhal 20
Dolphins 21
Porpoises 22
Further Reading
24
INTRODUCTION
Canadian waters are defined here 011 a
purely topographic or bathymetric basis. The
continental shelf is the area between shore
and the 200 m depth contour. At the shelf
edge, the continental slope begins; it extends
at least as far as the 2,000 m contour. For
this article, Canadian waters are considered
to extend across the entire shelf and slope.
Thus, on the east coast our area of interest
reaches 600 km offshore in places, and on
the west coast as much as 100 km offshore.
What is a Cetacean?
There are at least 75 to 80 living species
in the mammalian order Cetacea. They
inhabit all oceans as well as many estuaries
and a few large river systems. The cetaceans
have made the most complete and successful
adaptation to an aquatic existence of any
group of mammals. Some of the smaller
kinds of porpoise are less than 2 m long and
weigh only a few tens of kg; the great whales
can be up to 30 m long and weigh well over
100 metric tons (t).
All cetaceans have a number of characteristics in common. The body is elongate
and superficially shaped like that of a fish.
However, unlike a fish's tail, the cetacean's
bi-lobed flukes are horizontal rather than
vertical (Figure I). Neither the flukes nor the
dorsal fin (present in most species, lacking
in a few) are supported by a bony skeleton.
The two paddle-like front limbs, called
flippers or pectoral fins, are supported by
short armbones and many "extra" fingerbones. The external ear openings are pinholes
on either side of the head. The nostrils are
situated on top of the h~ad instead of near
the front as in most mammals. The genitalia,
as well as two nipples in females, are concealed within the ventral outline of the body.
Cetacean skin is smooth and somewhat
rubbery to the touch. It is hairless except for
a few bristles on parts of the head.
There are two living cetacean suborders:
the Mysticeti, whales with baleen (whalebone), and the Odontoceti, whales with
teeth. All mysticetes have paired external,
fleshy blowholes, whereas all odontocetes
have a single blowhole.
Mysticetes possess teeth during the fetal
stage, but these are resorbed or lost before
birth. They are replaced functionally by
baleen, rooted in the palate, inside the "old"
tooth row. The baleen consists of a series of
blades or plates, formed from keratin, a
material similar to human fingernails. The
fringed inner edges of these transversely
oriented plates form a sieve or mat against
which prey organisms become trapped as seawater is expelled from the mouth (Figure 2).
Thus, baleen whales, like certain birds (e.g.
flamingos and some ducks) and fishes (e.g.
Underwater World
3
the family Delphinidae, dolphins. By this
view, porpoises have spade-shaped teeth
and a greatly reduced beak, or a blunt snout
(Figure 3). Dolphins have conical teeth and
a beak which usually is set off from the
melon (the bulbous part of the head in front
of the nostrils, corresponding to the upper
lip in other mammals) by a crease. However, such definitions break down in many
instances and are violated by common usage.
Fishermen, whalers and many scientists use
the words dolphin and porpoise arbitrarily
or interchangeably.
In this article, we adhere to the terminology for species followed by the Scientific
Committee of the International Whaling
Commission. Many references to whales,
dolphins, or porpoises in the introductory
sections that follow can be understood to
mean cetaceans in general, rather than any
specific taxonomic group.
Figure 2. The mouth of a young blue whale at the Coal Harbour, B.C., whaling
station, showing the mat comprised of the frayed ends of the darkly
pigmented baleen in the upper jaws. Gordon C. Pike, standing in front of
the whale, was a Canadian government scientist who studied the whales
caught off British Columbia during the 1950s and 1960s. Photograph from
G.C. Pike collection.
basking sharks), are filter-feeders.
Odontocetes, by contrast, do not have
baleen during any stage of their development. All odontocetes possess teeth
throughout life, although in a number of
species some or all the teeth remain
embedded and do not erupt through the
gums. In the narwhal, one tooth of males
becomes a highly modified tusk protruding
outside the mouth.
With few exceptions, cetacean coloration
consists of some combination of black,
white, and shades of gray. Males and females
of most species have a similar colour pattern,
making it difficult for humans to tell the
sexes apart. Pigmentation patterns have
evolved to help meet the ecological and social
needs of the animals. The complex pigmentation of many other odontocetes probably
allows them to recognize one another and
may also serve to confuse their prey. The
black and white markings of Dall's porpoise
could be a form of mimicry, making this
small porpoise difficult to distinguish
from its similarly pigmented predator, the
killer whale.
Dolphin, Porpoise, or Whale?
These non-scientific terms are applied to
cetaceans in an inconsistent manner, and
they cannot be rigorously defined. In North
America, the terms dolphin and porpoise
are used for most species whose maximum
body length is less than about 5 m, and all
the larger cetaceans (a few of the smaller
ones as well) are called whales. Textbooks
often indicate that members of the family
Phocoenidae are porpoises; members of
Evolutionary Origins of Cetaceans
The earliest ancestors of cetaceans have yet
to be discovered. However, there is no doubt
that they were terrestrial mammals. The
fossil remains of a primitive cetacean,
Pakicetus, were recently found in Pakistan.
It lived during the early Eocene, more than
55 million years ago. Like other early
cetaceans, Pakicetus had a full battery of
teeth which made it a formidable predator
in the warm, shallow waters near which it
evolved.
We can only speculate about what made
the archaeocetes, or ancient whales (a longextinct suborder of Cetacea), venture into the
sea. Was it to escape intense predation on
land, to avoid competition for food and
living space, or simply and more probably
to exploit an abundance of food found along
the margins of rivers and seas? These early
whales were all long and slender of body,
with a relatively small head. The nostrils
opened well in front of the eyes, for the
Figure 3. An adult harbor porpoise taken from a gillnet off Grand Manan, N.B., in
the lower Bay of Fundy. Photograph copyright L. Murison, courtesy
D.E. Gaskin.
4
Underwater World
pronounced "telescoping" or over-riding of
the bones of the skull, characteristic of living
odontocetes and mysticetes, did not occur in
archaeocetes. These early whales probably
had external>hind limbs, although they may
have been vestigial and greatly reduced in size
and utility.
Whether the living suborders Odontoceti
and Mysticeti both had evolutionary origins
in the Archaeoceti is a question which has
long been debated. In spite of major differences in living species, earlier forms of the
living suborders show substantial similarities
to some archaeocetes and were probably
derived from them. Thus, the origin and evolutionary flowering of whales appears to
show a pattern of continued and radical
adaptation to exploit food resources at all
higher levels of the food chain in ever deeper
and more offshore marine waters.
developed to an extraordinary degree. A
trained porpoise in Hawaii proved capable
of descending to nearly 600 meters; sperm
whales can dive to even greater depths and
sometimes remain submerged for an hour or
more. But cetaceans do not suffer from the
bends, a painful and sometimes fatal condition in human divers in which dissolved
nitrogen forms tiny bubbles in the bloodstream and limb joints. A porpoise's muscle tissue becomes supersaturated with dissolved nitrogen during a long dive, but the
mechanism enabling cetaceans to tolerate
high levels of dissolved nitrogen while avoiding the bends remains a mystery.
Cetaceans have up to two or three times
more blood per unit of body weight than
humans. In addition, some cetaceans have
enough myoglobin in their muscles to carry
more than half again as much oxygen as the
haemoglobin in red blood cells alone can
carry. This substantial capacity for acquiring
and distributing oxygen within the body is
enhanced by a powerful heart, large sinuses
in the venous system, and large networks of
capillaries, called retia mirabilia or "wonderful nets", that facilitate the "diving
response". These retia are especially
pronounced in odontocetes. While breathing
at the surface, the cetacean's heart rate
increases, thus adding to the rapid reloading
of red blood cells with oxygen, then slows
appreciably while diving.
Sensory Systems
Of the five familiar senses used by most
terrestrial mammals to communicate and
assess their environment - sight, smell,
taste, hearing, and touch - hearing is the
most important to cetaceans. Olfaction,
the ability to detect I airborne smells, is
diminished or absent. 'Vision, although well
developed in some species, is of use to a
whale mainly in close-range activities.
Whales are believed to have well-developed
tactile sense.
All cetaceans are acoustically active, and
although direct evidence concerning the
importance of sound to some species is
lacking, it is clear that their keen sense of
hearing and highly specialized systems of
sound production are essential qualities permitting cetaceans to exploit a wide variety
of habitats.
a
Diving
The diving capabilities of cetaceans are
Temperature Regulation
Among the most serious challenges facing
a warm-blooded animal living an aquatic
existence is heat retention. The core body
temperature of cetaceans is about 37°C, a
condition maintained even in the Arctic
where ambient water temperatures can be as
low as - 2°C. This is made possible by a
layer of blubber between the skin and muscle
which serves as an efficient insulator. The
Figure 4. A fin whale ends its feeding run by surfacing on its right side, mouth open
and throat greatly expanded. The left flipper sticks up in the air, water
streams from the left corner of the whale's mouth, and white water is
pushed ahead of the rostrum in the foreground. Photograph in the
St. Lawrence River, near Tadoussac, by Fred Bruemmer.
lipid-rich blubber also serves as a depot for
storing large amounts of energy, which
sustain the whale during periods when an
adequate food supply is unavailable.
Efficient though it may be for conserving
body heat, a cetacean's insulative blubber
could cause overheating during bursts of
physical activitiy or as sea temperatures rise.
Whales have no sweat glands, which in
humans permit evaporative cooling instead, they have the capability of controlling their blood flow by means of a
"counter current heat exchange" system in
the flukes and flippers. They can either
release excess heat by allowing a generous
flow of blood to these appendages, or retain
it by restricting the blood supply to the flukes
and flippers.
Food and Feeding
Cetaceans are at or near the top of the
marine food chain. The baleen whales can
be regarded as marine counterparts of
terrestrial grazers. Their social structure,
foraging and feeding behavior, and longdistance migrations allow them to exploit
relatively diffuse aggregations of small
marine invertebrates and fishes. Certain
broad parallels can be drawn between populations of baleen whales and the large
migratory herds of ungulates on land.
Zooplankton, a major food of baleen
whales, are small swarming organisms which
are carried some distance by currents; they
are thus distinguished from swimming organisms, called nekton, which generally travel
on their own power. The term krill is often
loosely applied to all the planktonic crustaceans eaten by baleen ' whales, although it
properly refers only to a group of relatively
large shrimp-like forms called euphausiids.
The ventral pleats of rorquals (Balaenopteridae) allow them to expand the throat and
accommodate a large volume of seawater in
the gullet (Figure 4). As the water is expelled,
prey organisms are filtered by the baleen and
retained for ingestion, and the whale's throat
returns to its normal slim profile.
Toothed whales prey mainly on fish,
squid, and crustaceans. Some also eat
worms, molluscs, and other benthic (bottom-dwelling) creatures. Usually, toothed
whales chase and grasp or suction individual
organisms and swallow them whole. With a
few exceptions, the teeth of whales, dolphins,
and porpoises are not useful for chewing.
The toothed whales are thus hunters in the
truest mammalian sense, searching, chasing,
and capturing their prey on a one-to-one
basis. Some, like killer whales, have been
likened to wolves; hunting in packs (called
"pods" in the case of whales), they manage
to kill and consume the largest potential prey
in their domain. Others, like sperm whales,
Underwater World
Figure 5. The sight of a humpback whale's long, flexible flipper waving in the air is
common along parts of the Canadian east coast in summer. Photograph
in the lowef Bay of Fundy by Porter Turnbull.
hunt alone in the darkness of abyssal depths,
using strategies as yet u.nobserved by
humans.
Behavior at the Surface
A number of terms, many of them coined
by whalers, are used to describe the behavior
of whales at the surface. As a whale surfaces
after a dive, it exhales. This is called blowing,
and the visible column of vapor that results
is called a blow. Usually the whale will make
shallow dives, or simply sink below the
surface, between the blows in a series. At the
end of a series, however, the whale makes
a sounding dive; when a whale sounded, the
whalers did not expect to see it at the surface
again for some time. The back and tail stock
are usually arched high, and some whales
begin a sounding dive by jluking-up. When
a whale flukes-up, its tail flukes break the
surface, sometimes rising vertically to show
the undersides in full view.
Lobtailing is when a whale uses its flukes
to slap the surface of the water. Flippering
is when it rolls onto its side and slaps the
surface with a flipper, or simply causes a
flipper to wave in the air (Figure 5).
Breaching (not "breeching" or "broaching")
is when a whale jumps above the surface.
The purpose of lobtailing, flippering, and
breaching is not known.
HISTORY OF WHALING IN CANADA
Early Commercial Whaling
The Basques were the first people to hunt
whales commercially in Canada. Recent
archival and archaeological research has
revealed that large ships began visiting the
Strait of Belle Isle region to catch whales
before 1567. The Spanish and French
Basques called this strait the Grand Bay, and
in it they pursued the "Grand Bay whale",
which we take to mean the bowhead. Right
whales were also caught there.
5
By the late 17th century, the Basque
whaling initiative in the New World had
declined. However, French colonists in the
St. Lawrence region began a fishery for white
whales (belugas) during the late 17th and
early 18th centuries. Also, during the second
half of the 18th century, pelagic whalers
from New England began to visit the coasts
of Newfoundland and Labrador, and they
entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence in pursuit of right whales, humpbacks, and
possibly bowheads. Occasional incursions
by American whalers continued into the
middle 1800s, but their activities were
discouraged by Canadian authorities and
ended soon thereafter.
Meantime, several Loyalist families that
settled on the Gaspe coast of southern
Quebec started their own whaling industry.
As many as a dozen Gaspe schooners were
active at times during the 19th century. They
cruised throughout much of the St. Lawrence
and along the Labrador coast, taking right
whales and possibly a few bowheads when
they found them, but more often catching
humpbacks and some fin whales and blue
whales. This enterprise lasted until 1893.
Arctic Whaling
Native people in Canada's arctic regions
historically depended on bowheads, belugas,
and narwhals for subsistence. They hunted
from skin boats and used hand-thrown
implements to capture these animals. Later,
they assisted the commercial whalers from
Great Britain and the United States who
came, beginning in the first half of the 19th
century, to hunt bowheads (Figure 6) and,
I
Figure 6. One of two bowhead whales killed near Cape Fullerton, western Hudson
Bay, in 1918 or 1919. Photograph courtesy Public Archives Canada, RG 85,
Vol. 1045, File 540-3, Part 3.
6
Underwater World
Table 1. Whale catch at Canadian
shore stations since World
War II. Sources: International
Whaling Statistics; Pike and
MacAskie (1969); Mitchell ~n
Schevill [ed.], 1974}; Mercer~n
Mitchell [ed.], 1975}.
Blue Fin Hump
British Columbia
1948
37 115
1949
2 105
76
1950
4 150
95
1951
9 216
51
1952 16 240
61
1953
47
8 181
1954 11
150 106
1955 11
37
120
1956 14 168
28
1957 15 284
49
1958
40
8 573
1959 28 369
27
1962 27 157
16
1963 30 220
24
10
1964 12 140
1965
18
9
83
1966
134
1967
102
Newfoundland-Labrador
1946 11
502
5
1947 14 413
6
1948 57 669
15
11
1949 30 425
1950 15 409
16
1951 24 483
29
1952
1
1
1953
1
1954
1955
2
1956
7
1957
23
1958
4
55
1959
14
1960
1
1961
1962
1963
1964
1
1965
6
1966
164
1967
436
1968
438
1969
376
5
1970
14
406
1971
301
16
1972
265
Nova ScoUa
1962
1963
1964
56
1965
135
1966
263
1967
309
1968
1 262
1969
1 157
2
1970
1
170
1971
117
4
1972
95
less intensively, belugas, narwhals, and bottlenose whales. The activities of these commerciaf whalers had a severe impact on the
stocks of bowheads. In addition, the
presence of the whalers profoundly affected
native settlement patterns, hunting technology, and health. The Hudson's Bay
Company took an early interest in whaling,
too . This interest led to the establishment of
intensive beluga fisheries near certain trading
posts in Canada.
/
Modern Commercial Whaling on the
Atlantic Coast
Modern shore whaling began in Newfoundland in 1898 with the establishment by
Norwegian interests of a station at Snooks
Arm on Notre Dame Bay along the northeast coast. The whaling season was limited
by ice conditions to the summer months, so
within a year an additional plant was opened
by the same company on Hermitage Bay
along the island's south coast. There whaling could be done year-round.
Although the whaling initiative was
appreciated by those_ local residents for
whom it provided employment, it also
incurred hostility. Some Newfoundland
fishermen believed whaling would lead to a
decrease in fish landings; these men thought
whales were responsible for driving bait fish
toward shore, so any reduction in whale
numbers was expected to result in a commensurate decrease in the availability of bait.
They also feared that whales would collide
with and ruin nets while being chased. People
living near rendering plants complained of
the stench. Conservation officials worried
that the same pattern of overexploitation and
depletion of whale stocks that had occurred
in Norway would emerge in eastern Canada.
Largely in response to these concerns, the
Whaling Industry Act was implemented in
Newfoundland in April 1902. It created a
licensing system intended to limit entry into
the whale "fishery" and set in place an
inspection and reporting system to monitor
whaling activities.
Sei Sperm Minke Pilot Killer Bottlenose'
2
3
24
5
22
14
134
139
37
93
39
185
340
154
613
604
354
89
28
69
40
153
126
275
226
320
127
190
112
260
172
147
105
151
231
304
4
4
23
16
39
11
18
14
53
29
12
2
5
5
13
14
7
1
1
1
2
2
7
4
3
1
5
2
2
1G,1R
4
3
3
1
4
2
10G
3
2
215
55
17
20
32
13
57
37
42
18
11
22
45
18
35
29
28
25
50
86
73
97
5
8
55
100
149
93
235
183
Other2
4
19
12
2
15
49
172
3102
3155
3584
2298
6612
9794
7831
789
1725
1957
6262
150
221
2849
1520
887
739
311
123
155
4
13
,
2
70
2
40
22
14
6
5
25
37
41
' "Bottlenose" whales from British Columbia are Baird's beaked whales; those from
east coast stations are northern bottlenose whales.
2 G = gray whale; R = right whale.
Underwater World
Figure 7. A 39-ft male humpback whale on the flensing deck at Coal Harbour, B.C.,
1950. Photograph by G.C. Pike.
The legislation did not slow the development of the industry, however. During the
period December 1902 to November 1903,
there were 25 new applications for whaling
licenses, most of which were granted.
Fourteen new stations began operating in
Newfoundland in 1904; five more in 1905.
In addition, 13 whaling stations were active
on the coast of Labrador from the Strait of
Belle Isle north to Cartwright. Only five or
six stations survived through the 1910 season.
By 1915, well over 7,600 whales, most of
them blue, fin, and humpback, had been
landed in Newfoundland and Labrador.
A station at Seven Islands {Sept-lies) in the
St. Lawrence Estuary operated from 1905 to
1915, accounting for at least 659 whales of
three or more species. This was the only
modern whaling station ever established in
the St. Lawrence, other than a few on the
west coast of Newfoundland.
After 1915, whaling was episodic in Newfoundland and Labrador. The Rose-au-Rue
station in Placentia Bay had the longest
period of continuous operation, from 1902
to 1946 (except 1908). After the Second
World War, whaling on the east coast
centered at four sites: Hawke Harbour,
Labrador (1947-1950, 1957-1958); Williamsport (1947-1951,1967-1972) and South Dildo
(1947-1972), Newfoundland; and Blandford,
Nova Scotia (1964-1972). Catch statistics for
1946-1972 are given in Table I.
Modern Commercial Whaling on the
Pacific Coast
The first modern shore whaling station on
the Pacific coast of North America was
established in 1905 at Sechart, in Barclay
Sound on the west side of Vancouver Island.
A second station began operations in 1907
at Kyuquot, 160 km north of Sechart.
During the winter season of 1907, catcher
boats from these two stations transferred to
Page's Lagoon, near Nanaimo on Georgia
Strait. Winter whaling in British Columbia
proved unprofitable, however, and this
practice ceased after 1909. Two additional
stations were set up in 1911 on the Queen
Charlotte Islands: one at Rose Harbour in
the extreme south of the islands; the other
at Naden Harbour in the extreme north.
Thus, for several years (1911-1914) four
whaling stations were active on the shores of
British Columbia.
However, the Sechart station no longer
operated after 1914, and the Kyuquot station
closed permanently after the 1925 season.
The stations in the Queen Charlotte Islands
operated sporadically through the early years
of the Second World War, but their activities ceased after 1943. Although they
were backed by Canadian, American and
Norwegian capital, the crews on board the
catcher boats of all four stations were almost
entirely Norwegian.
After the war, a new whaling station was
built at Coal Harbour in Quatsino Sound on
the northwest coast of Vancouver Island.
Whale meat, much of it exported to Japan,
quickly became the major product of the
Coal Harbour facility. The station was active
from 1948 through 1967 (Figure 7), the only
break being for the years 1960-61 when
product markets sagged and operations came
to a halt. Catch statistics for 1948-1967 are
given in Table I.
The apparent reason for Coal Harbour's
shutdown after 1967 was a sharp decline in
the catch of fin and sei whales. Their meat
is more valuable than that of the sperm whale
which, by 1967, had become the predominant species brought in by the Coal Harbour
catcher boats.
In addition to modern shore whaling, a
major non-Canadian pelagic whale fishery,
based on the use of highly mechanized
factory ships and their attendant fleets of
catcher boats, existed in the eastern North
Pacific until as recently as 1979.
Regulation of Whaling
Canada signed the International Whaling
Convention of 1946, and Canada's Whaling
Convention Act of 1951 provided a new
framework for domestic regulation of the
7
whaling industry. Membership and participation in the International Whaling Commission (IWC) from 1949 meant that species
protection, minimum length limits, and
(after 1967) catch quotas were applied to
whale stocks exploited commercially in
Canadian waters.
The Minister of Fisheries declared a moratorium on commercial whaling in Canada in
1972, after the whaling seasons at Williamsport, South Dildo, and Blandford had
ended. This ban remains in effect. However,
in 1981 Canada announced the withdrawal
of its membership in the IWe. The Whaling
Convention Act was repealed in 1982, and
in its place the Cetacean Protection Regulations, issued under the Fisheries Act, came
into force in July 1982. These regulations
(which do not apply to belugas and narwhals)
require that anyone, other than Indians and
Inuit, wishing to hunt cetaceans must obtain
a license from the Minister of Fisheries
before doing so. Indians and Inuit are
allowed to hunt all cetaceans, except "right
whales" (balaenids), without a license if the
products are used for local consumption.
Separate federal regulations apply to
narwhals and belugas.
SPECIES ACCOUNTS
Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis)
This whale was given its English vernacular name by whalers who considered it the
preferred quarry. It was the right whale
to hunt because of the relative ease with
which it could be taken and its high yield of
valuable products, notably oil and whalebone (baleen). Right whales formerly
occurred worldwide between cold temperate
and subtropical latitudes. Overhunting
caused them to disappear from some areas
and to become very rare in others. Today
there are only a few thousand right whales
worldwide, most of them in the Southern
Hemisphere. No more than a few hundred
survive in the western North Atlantic, and
the present population in the eastern North
Pacific is believed to number less than 100.
Right whales are robust animals, whose
girth can be more than 4/5 the body length.
Large females reach lengths of 18 m and
weights of 100 t or more; males are somewhat smaller. The head comprises up to onethird of the body length. There is no dorsal
fin or ridge. The flippers are broad and up
to 1.7 m long. The flukes, up to 6 m wide,
tip to tip, have a deeply-notched rear margin.
The right whale's narrow, curved rostrum
(top of the head) is enfolded on either side
by the massive lower lips (Figure 8), which
are usually scalloped along their upper edges.
Patches of cornified skin, called callosities,
occur on certain parts of the head. There is
always a relatively large callosity, or network
8
Figure 8. A close-up, face-on view of
a right whale in the lower
Bay of Fundy. The callosities
on the rostrum and chin are
evident, as is the smooth
back which lacks a dorsal
fin. Photograph by Porter
Turnbull.
of callosities, on the rostrum. Callosities also
occur on the chin, around the blowholes, and
above the eyes. Most callosities are colonized
by large numbers of white, yellow, orange,
or pinkish "whale lice" (cyamid crustaceans). Since each right whale has a distinctive arrangement of callosities, these
structures are carefully photographed by
researchers and used to identify and recognize individual whales.
Right whales are basically dark gray or
black, although piebald individuals are not
unusual. White patches on the ventral surface are common and can cover the entire
throat region and much of the belly. Except
for the callosities, the skin of right whales
is relatively free of ectoparasites. Although
frequently described as being heavily infested
with barnacles, right whales in the Northern
Hemisphere usually carry fewer barnacles
than do gray whales and humpbacks.
Right whales have considerably longer
baleen (up to 2.7 m) than any other species
except the bowhead. There are about
230-250 dark gray, finely-fringed plates per
side. Right whale baleen is supple, a quality
which made it valuable in the manufacture
of such things as skirt hoops, buggy whips,
and parasols - it was the "spring-steel"
of its time. At least 600 kg of baleen could
be extracted from a large right whale.
There is a gap at the front of the mouth
between the two rows of baleen. As the whale
feeds with its mouth partially open, seawater
Underwater World
streams through this gap and passes out
through the fringes of baleen, leaving behind
the small organisms trapped against the
screen of baleen. Small crustaceans, principally copepods and euphausiids, form the
diet of right whales. There is no evidence that
they eat fish.
Right whales have a distinctly V-shaped
blow. They sometimes spend long periods
lying motionless at the surface, with only the
broad back and blowholes exposed. At other
times, they lobtail or flipper. Right whales
breach occasionally, propelling their entire
bodies clear of the water. These whales are
slow swimmers. When chased, they can
achieve speeds of close to 20 km per hour for
short periods, but they seldom move faster
than about 5-10 km per hour.
Right whales were formerly abundant in
Canadian waters. However, their migrations
are poorly understood. In the eastern North
Pacific, right whales occur in winter as far
south as Baja California and Hawaii; in
summer, as far north as the Gulf of Alaska
and Bering Sea. In other parts of the world,
sheltered embayments serve as winter nurseries for females with calves; but off the
west coast of North America, no such
nursery areas have been identified. A major
nineteenth century whaling ground, called
the Kodiak Ground, extended from Vancouver Island across the Gulf of Alaska to
the Aleutian Islands. Right whales were
caught there mostly from May through July.
In the western North Atlantic, the right
whale's winter range is between Cape Cod
and Florida. At least a part of the population
migrates north in spring, reaching the Bay
of Fundy and Scotian Shelf during summer
and fall. Formerly, right whales were present
during summer east of the Grand Banks,
in much of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and
Strait of Belle Isle, and along the outer coasts
of Newfoundland and Labrador.
During recent years the lower Bay of
Fundy has become recognized as a feeding
ground for right whales in summer and
autumn. The area of Browns Bank (60 km
south of Cape Sable, N.S.) and the vicinity
of Grand Manan Island (N.B.) are visited by
a population of approximately 200 right
whales. Females and calves tend to congregate inshore, beginning in July. Throughout
the rest of summer and well into October,
they can be observed in Head Harbour
Passage and Grand Manan Channel and
along the edges of Grand Manan Basin.
Dramatic bouts of courtship, sometimes
involving seven or eight males clustered
around a single female, occur here as well.
At the same time, right whales, generally
unaccompanied by calves, are present on the
Scotian Shelf, especially in or near Roseway
Basin between Browns and Baccaro banks.
Photodocumentation has demonstrated the
movement of animals between the summer
feeding grounds off southeastern Canada
and a winter calving ground off Georgia and
Florida in the southeast US. They probably
comprise a separate stock from the one on
the European side of the North Atlantic,
which is believed to be almost extinct.
There is little definite information about
the life history of right whales. Most calves
are born in winter or spring at lengths of
4.5-6.0 m. Lactation continues through the
first summer and possibly into the second
year after birth. Judging by resightings of
known adult females in the South Atlantic
and others in the Northwest Atlantic, the
mean interval between births is at least
3 years.
Bowhead (Balaena mysticetus)
The bowhead, or Greenland whale, is the
only baleen species which lives year-round
in the Arctic. In historic times the bowhead's
distribution was nearly circumpolar, broken
only by the land mass of Greenland, the icechoked Northwest Passage in the central
Canadian Arctic, and a probable hiatus in
the vicinity of the Laptev Sea, north of
central Asia. Well over 50,000 bowheads
existed before their discovery and exploitation by Europeans began in the sixteenth
or seventeenth century. Today the world
population is probably no more than about
5,000 individuals. Northern Canadian waters
provide seasonal habitat for most of the
remaining world population.
Bowheads closely resemble right whales in
general body shape and size. Most are black
with varying amounts of white on the chin
and caudal peduncle (tail stock). The white
zone on the peduncle and fluke region may
increase in extent as the animal grows older.
Newborn bowheads are light gray.
The baleen of the bowhead can be nearly
twice as long as the right whale's. Lengths
of more than 4 m have been reliably
reported. The bowhead's dark baleen is
highly elastic, and the fringes are long and
fine. Like the right whale, the bowhead has
a bushy, sometimes V-shaped blow, and it
often flukes-up as it dives.
The bowhead maintains a close association
with sea ice, although during summer and
fall it can be found in completely open water.
Bowheads are known to be capable of breaking through new ice 22 cm thick. Their
ability to navigate and subsist in heavy ice
conditions offers several advantages. For
one, they can reach feeding areas generally
inaccessible to other mysticetes. For another,
it forestalls frequent contact with killer
whales, whose movements appear to be considerably limited by ice. The bowhead
appears capable of longer sub mergences than
other mysticetes. How the whales manage to
detect and anticipate small patches of open
Underwater World
water in huge expanses of ice is a mystery.
There are few documented records of ice
entrapment.
Although they do not eat fish, bowheads
are fairly versatile in their food habits. They
skim-feed much like right whales at times,
taking copepods and euphausiids near the
surface, but they also feed at or near the
bottom on benthic crustaceans such as
gammarid amphipods and cumaceans.
Bowheads are sometimes seen near the
surface with clouds of mud streaming from
the sides of the mouth.
Roes Welcome Sound, Repulse Bay, and
Lyon Inlet were important whaling grounds
for bowheads during the nineteenth century.
Some are still found in these and other parts
of Hudson Bay and Foxe Basin during
summer. There is movement through
Hudson Strait, but also some evidence of
wintering in Hudson Bay and western
Hudson Strait.
Many of the bowheads that winter at the
mouth of Hudson Strait and along the ice
edge in southern Davis Strait migrate north
in spring to the floe edge off Pond Inlet and
Lancaster Sound. In summer, bowheads
occur in low numbers in Barrow Strait,
Prince Regent Inlet, Admiralty Inlet, and
Navy Board Inlet as well as in Pond Inlet and
Lancaster Sound and along the east coast of
Baffin Island. Virtually all the navigable
channels and sounds in Canada's High
Arctic were searched by the British arctic
whalers of the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Large numbers of females and
calves were killed, and the fishery finally
collapsed as the Davis Strait stock became
severely depleted.
American whalers who had opened the
North Pacific right whale fishery in the Gulf
of Alaska and Bering Sea discovered the last
great bowhead whaling grounds in the Bering
Strait region in 1848. During the 1880s,
American whalers penetrated the western
Canadian Arctic, the bowhead's last
stronghold, by means of steam-powered
whaling vessels. By wintering on Herschel
Island and in sheltered harbors as far east
as Langton Bay, the whalers could manage
a few weeks of good hunting in the eastern
Beaufort Sea and Amundsen Gulf during
summer. Areas off Cape Bathurst and
western Banks Island were especially
productive whaling grounds. During the last
years of the commercial fishery, the bottom
fell out of the whalebone market, and the
pursuit of the bowhead by pelagic whalers
ended in all areas by about 1915.
Severe damage was done by commercial
whaling to all the bowhead stocks, but the
Bering Sea stock, which migrates in summer
into the western Canadian Arctic, was left
with the largest remnant population. It was
also the only stock still supporting a major
aboriginal subsistence whale fishery when
commercial whaling ended. Alaskan
Eskimos increased their hunting effort substantially during the 1970s, and their
bowhead fishery, conducted mainly as the
animals migrate along the north coast of
Alaska in spring and fall, was subjected to
close international scrutiny. An annual catch
quota set by the IWC is now enforced by the
Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, a
group of Alaskan whaling captains.
Native people in Canada's Arctic hunted
bowheads historically, but this activity
virtually ceased in the west once the commercial whalers stopped visiting the Beaufort
Sea in the early twentieth century. In the
eastern Canadian Arctic, desultory hunting
of bowheads continued at some settlements
into the 1970s. Today, there is no regular or
systematic hunt for bowheads in Canada,
and the Inuit are not well equipped to catch
bowheads or accustomed to utilize bowhead
carcasses efficiently. Although hunters in
several arctic communities have requested
licenses to hunt bowheads under the
Cetacean Protection Regulations, no licenses
have been issued owing to concern about the
bowhead's population status.
In spite of the large numbers killed by
commercial whalers, little was learned about
the bowhead's basic biology during the commercial whaling era. As a consequence, the
urgent need for information is now being met
by data and samples from the Alaska fishery.
Unfortunately, the data collection and
sampling are done under difficult field conditions, and relatively little new information
9
is provided by each additional whale that is
killed. The best available scientific opinion
is that bowheads breed mainly between
March and August. Most calves are probably
born during this period as well, at a mean
length of 4.0-4.5 m. Females reach sexual
maturity at a length of 14 m or somewhat
less. The calving interval, natural mortality rate, and other aspects of bowhead
population biology remain unknown.
Gray Whale (Eschrichtius robustus)
The gray whale is one of the few mysticetes
whose present-day range is limited to a single
ocean basin. A population inhabited the
North Atlantic until as recently as the seventeenth or eighteenth century, but it is now
extinct, possibly as a result of overhunting.
There are two stocks in the North Pacific.
One, called the Korean stock, winters off
Korea and southern Japan and summers in
the Sea of Okhotsk. This stock is close to
extinction. The eastern Pacific stock, also
called the California stock, migrates along
the west coast of North America, where
it is a major tourist attraction.
Gray whales have no dorsal fin, but there
is a pronounced hump followed by a series
of bumps along the back. The rostrum
and thus the mouthline is notably curved
(Figure 9), and there are two or more deep
furrows on the throat. Upon diving, the
flukes are sometimes lifted clear of the
surface; they are convex along the trailing
edge and separated by a deep notch.
Maximum length is about 15 m; a 13.4 m
femaie weighed over 31 tons. At birth, gray
Figure 9. One of ten gray whales taken under special scientific permit at Coal
Harbour, B.C., in 1953. Photograph by G.C. Pike.
10
Underwater World
whales are about 4.5 m long and weigh about
500 kg.
Gray whales are mottled gray. Their skin
is infested with large numbers of barnacles,
especially on the head, lips, sides of the neck,
flippers, and tail. Orange patches on the skin
are caused by "whale lice" - small crustaceans which colonize wounds and other
irregularities on the bodies of whales.
Gray whales have short, coarse, yellowishwhite baleen. The anterior plates on the right
side of the mouth are generally shorter than
those on the left, presumably because the
whales turn onto the right side more often
than the left as they forage along the bottom,
causing the baleen to wear unevenly.
Most gray whales winter in or near three
lagoons on the outer coast of the Baja
California peninsula - Ojo de Liebre
(Scammon's) Lagoon, San Ignacio Lagoon,
and Magdalena Bay or along the
mainland coast of Mexico. In early spring
the northward migration takes them close
along the coasts of California, Oregon,
Washington, and British Columbia. Early
arrivals begin to appear along the west
coasts of Vancouver Island and the Queen
Charlotte Islands in February or March.
Peak numbers pass during the first two
weeks of April, and the migration is essentially complete by late Mayor June. Most
gray whales reach the Bering'Sea by way of
Unimak Pass in the eastern Aleutian Islands;
their concentrated movement through this
pass during fall has facilitated attempts to
census the population. Many remain in the
Bering Sea for the summer to feed; others
proceed through Bering Strait into the
Chukchi Sea. A few enter the Beaufort Sea
and feed in the Mackenzie Delta. On their
way south, gray whales pass the Queen
Charlotte Islands and Vancouver Island,
mainly during December and January.
The gra~ whale's diet in the Bering and
Chukchi seas consists mainly of small,
bottom-dwelling crustaceans called gammarid amphipods. One of the best ways of
locating gray whales on their summer feeding
grounds is to watch for mud plumes in the
water, made as the whales feed on or near
the sea floor.
Of special interest to Canadians are the
gray whales that do not participate in the
entire 18,000 km round-trip migration. Gray
whales are present year-round in the vicinity
of Wickaninnish Bay, on the west coast of
Vancouver Island, and there are small, summering concentrations elsewhere along the
shores of Vancouver Island. The animals
spend much of their time feeding, probably
on mysid crustaceans and polychaete worms
which are locally abundant. Some of the gray
whale feeding areas are in Pacific Rim
National Park.
Sexual maturity is reached by both males
and females at a length of 11-12 m. Most
conceptions occur during the southward
migration in late fall or early winter, and
calves are born after 14 months of gestation,
in or near the Mexican lagoons. They are
weaned on the summering grounds at an age
of about 7 months.
Gray whales were traditionally hunted
by several Northwest Coast Indian tribes,
including the Nootka, Makah, Quilleute, and
Quinault. The whale hunt remained a part
of the Nootka and Makah cultures until as
recently as the early twentieth century.
American commercial whalers also killed
gray whales, although they preferred right
and sperm whales. An estimated 8,100 gray
whales were killed between 1846 and 1874,
mainly for their oil. Although badly depleted
by the 18705, the eastern Pacific population
has recovered well. It now numbers about
16,000 whales.
Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus)
No known animal, living or extinct, equals
the blue whale in body size. This whale is
cosmopolitan, inhabiting all areas from the
tropics to the polar regions. The largest blue
whales live in the southern ocean and rely on
the vast swarms of krill available in the
Antarctic during summer. One female killed
in the Antarctic was slightly less than 30 m
long; another 27 m female taken in the
Antarctic weighed more than 150 tons. These
are the largest whales on record and were
probably close to the maximum size for the
species. Blue whales up to 23.5 m long have
been caught off Newfoundland; 26.2 m, off
British Columbia.
The body shape of blue whales and their
close relatives has been widely misconstrued
by artists whose observations were limited to
dead animals on a beach or fiensing deck.
In life, these whales appear surprisingly long
and slender, almost serpentine. Only while
feeding does the throat expand to accom-
modate large amounts of zooplankton and
seawater, giving the whale a tadpole-like
appearance. The blue whale has a broad, flat
rostrum (Figure 10), sickle-shaped flippers,
and a small dorsal fin set relatively far back
on the body. As the animal surfaces to
breathe, the head clears the water first, and
the explosive blow rises in a single vertical
column, perhaps 9 m high. The head disappears, and all that remains visible is a
long expanse of back. This may then disappear as the animal rolls forward to dive,
and then the dorsal fin appears, followed by
the large flukes (up to 5 m, tip to tip). The
sighting of the fin long after the back breaks
the surface is a feature that helps identify
this species in the field. Blue whales do
not always fluke-up before diving.
The skin of blue whales is blue gray to light
gray in color, with light gray mottling. Only
the undersides of the flippers are truly white.
The blue whale has a pleated throat, with 80
or more longitudinal grooves extending back
along the belly at least to the umbilicus. The
relatively coarse bristles of the blue whale's
baleen are efficient for filtering euphausiids,
its principal prey. The entire oral cavity tongue, palate, and baleen - is inky black.
Except in areas where food is highly concentrated, blue whales are usually encountered alone or in small groups. Thus, they
are not considered particularly social.
However, they make high-intensity sounds
of very low frequency (20 Hz or less), some
so low that they are outside the hearing range
of most humans. Such calls may well be used
for communication. Since it is known that
these sounds can travel several hundred
kilometers underwater, blue whales may
coordinate their activities over great distances
even when individuals are not observed in
close physical proximity.
Sexual maturity is attained at an age of
about 10 years. Breeding occurs mainly at
low latitudes during late fall and winter, and
Figure 10. Two blue whales surfacing near a whale-watChing boat in the St. Lawrence
River near Tadoussac, September 1983. Note that the mouth of the lunging individual is closed. Photograph by P.F. Macfarlane.
Underwater World
ended inconclusively, but the blue whale's
injuries were probably serious and may have
been enough to kill it.
Many of the blue whales that visit waters
along the east coast of Canada probably
belong to a wide-ranging western North
Atlantic stock. An October stranding in New
Jersey and a kill in January in the Panama
Canal are among the few pubished records
of blue whales south of Nova Scotia on the
west side of the North Atlantic. In summer,
some blue whales migrate into Davis Strait
and Denmark Strait. They have been caught
north of 80 N near the edge of pack ice in
the Northeast Atlantic in June, but they
probably do not regularly move so far north
as Baffin Bay in the west.
Of special interest to Canadians are the
blue whales that feed in summer along
the north shore of the River and Gulf of
St. Lawrence, as far upstream as the mouth
of the Saguenay River near Tadoussac. They
begin arriving in the Gulf in April or May,
as soon as substantial open water becomes
available. Where deep water comes close to
the coast, blue whales can easily be observed
from shore, particularly from headlands and
cliffs. The best time for seeing blue whales
in the St. Lawrence is August through
September, when the density of whales in
upstream areas reaches a peak. Most blue
whales probably enter the Gulf through
Cabot Strait in spring. Some remain in
St. Lawrence waters until at least December,
and occasionally they become trapped by ice
along the southwest coast of Newfoundland
in mid-winter (February or March).
0
Figure 11. A mother fin whale and her
calf in the lower Bay of
Fundy, viewed from the air
in August 1980. Note how
the white on the right lower
jaw sweeps onto the neck
behind the blowholes to
form part of the pigmentation "chevron." Photograph
by R.R. Reeves.
gestation lasts about a year. Thus, the blue
whale's reproductive cycle is closely attuned
to its migration schedule. Most adult females
probably bear a calf every second or third
year.
Blue whales are about 7-8 m long and
weigh 2-3 tons at birth. Seven months later,
at weaning, they are 16 m long and weigh
25 tons. This prodigious increase in size is
made possible by the rich milk, 35-50 percent
fat, provided by the mother. It has been
estimated that she supplies about 250 litres
of milk per day, and that the calf gains over
90 kg of weight per day, or some 4 kg per
hour.
Because of their size, power, and speed,
blue whales would seem immune to natural
predation. However, in a well-documented
event off southern Baja California, a pod of
about 30 killer whales attacked and badly
mauled an 18 m blue whale. The attack
In British Columbia, blue whales rarely
approach the coast, but they can be found
in small numbers weil offshore. These whales
may belong to an eastern North Pacific stock
that winters off Baja California and heads
north in May, reaching waters off Vancouver
Island in June. Many of the animals
probably continue migrating north until
reaching the main summer feeding grounds
in the Gulf of Alaska or south of the eastern
Aleutian Islands. By late August, they begin
returning south, and a second peak in
abundance occurs off Vancouver Island in
September. The whales begin to reappear in
Baja California waters in October.
The blue whale became fully protected
from commercial exploitation in the North
Pacific after the 1965 season. The hunting
of blue whales in the North Atlantic and
Arctic was prohibited by the IWC from the
beginning of the 1955 season for a period of
five years. Iceland and Denmark objected to
the ban and continued hunting blue whales
through 1959. When the prohibition was
extended for a further five years beginning
in 1960, all member states agreed to adhere
to it, and since that time the species has been
11
fully protected in the North Atlantic and
Arctic.
There may have been more than 200,000
blue whales in the world's oceans at the turn
of the century, of which some 6,000 would
have inhabited the eastern North Pacific and
1,100-1,500 the western North Atlantic.
Today, only a few thousand remain worldwide. There could still be as many as 1,500
in the North Pacific, but only hundreds are
believed to survive in the North Atlantic.
Continued protection will be necessary for
many years if blue whales are to recover
fully.
Fin Whale (Baiaenoptera physaius)
The fin whale, second in size only to the
blue whale, has a wider distribution and is
considerably more abundant than its larger
relative. Groups of fin whales, sometimes
numbering up to 20 individuals, were his toricaily common in coastal and inshore waters
at temperate latitudes. Decades of intensive
exploitation have greatly reduced most fin
whale populations, but these large, fastswimming animals are still a common sight
in Canadian coastal waters.
Fin whales range widely in the North
Atlantic, from the Mediterranean Sea to
Norway in the east and from Florida to Davis
Strait in the west. They are abundant around
Iceland and off the east and west coasts of
Greenland. In the North Pacific, fin whales
occur from the Chukchi Sea in the north,
south to the Gulf of California in the east
and Japan in the west. They have also been
reported from the mid-Pacific.
It is difficult for an inexperienced observer
to distinguish between the fin whale and the
sei whale. The fin whale's asymmetric head
coloration is its most reliable and least
subtle field mark (Figure 11). The right lower
jaw and right front third of the baleen are
white; the rest of the head and baleen,
darker. Behavioral differences can also help
in making an identification. The fin whale
has a characteristic roll. The head usually
breaks the surface first, and the animal blows
just before the dorsal fin appears. The fin
whale usually arches its back high out of the
water on the terminal dive of a series, but
it almost never flukes-up. The sei whale
usually approaches the surface at a flatter
angle, and its prominent dorsal fin can sometimes be seen while the whale is blowing. Sei
whales usually do not arch the back high as
they dive.
Fin whales have a varied diet. In some
areas or at certain times of year, they feed
heavily on pelagic crustaceans, mainly
euphausiids but also copepods occasionally.
In other areas or at other times, small schooling fishes such as capelin, herring, sand
lance, and anchovies are the staple fare. Cod,
whiting, mackerel, and squid are sometimes
eaten.
12
Underwater World
Tagging data and morphological differences suggest the existence of at least two
separate populations of fin whales off
eastern Canada, one of which summers on
the Scotian Shelf and in the Gulf of
St. Lawrence, and the other in the Labrador
Sea. There may be a small degree of mixing
between these two populations. Fin whales
share much of the same habitat with blue
whales in the St. Lawrence, arriving in large
numbers by July and feeding along the North
Shore throughout summer and fall. They
also are regularly seen in the lower Bay of
Fundy, where they sometimes enter and
damage inshore herring weirs.
In British Columbia, fin whales are usually
found well offshore but are sometimes seen
in exposed coastal seas such as Hecate Strait
and Queen Charlotte Sound, and less often
in protected waters such as Queen Charlotte
Strait. Some fin whales, mainly young
individuals, remain to feed throughout the
summer. Others migrate past the British
Columbia coast.
Because of their large size and ready availability, fin whales figured significantly in
the catches of all modern Canadian shore
whaling stations. Beginning with the 1967
season, a Canadian national quota was set
on fin whales hunted from the east coast
whaling stations. As additional information
became available on stock identity and population size, this quota was steadily lowe~ed.
Canada's east coast fin whale population has
been unexploited since 1972.
with long, silky fringes similar to the right
whale's. It can filter very small organisms,
such as copepods, amphipods, and juvenile
euphausiids. The sei whale gulps as well as
skims its prey, and it eats schooling fishes
in addition to zooplankton.
It is not uncommon to find sei whales in
multispecies feeding aggregations, in the
close company of other balaenopterids as
well as right whales. In some parts of the
world, sei whales are believed to have
increased in numbers because of the removal
or reduction of right whales, their apparent
competitors for copepods and other small
planktonic forms.
Sei whales in the Northern Hemisphere
breed and give birth primarily during winter
months, in the southern half of their range.
The mean length at birth is about 4.5 m;
calves are weaned at 5-9 months of age. Both
males and females reach sexual maturity at
lengths of 12.8-14 m, which probably correspond to ages of 5-10 years. Maximum
length is about 18 m. The calving interval is
2-3 years.
There are believed to be two stocks of sei
whales in the western North Atlantic with
non-overlapping distributions, one on the
Scotian Shelf, the other in the Labrador
Sea. The Nova Scotia stock migrates north
along the continental slope from wintering
grounds off the eastern U.S., consistently
reaching waters off Nova Scotia by June and
July. Sei whales largely disappear from this
area for a period during late summer, then
reappear in substantial numbers during a
regular southward fall migration from midSeptember to mid-November. The Labrador
Sea stock is present in the Labrador Sea by
early June. Animals from this stock apparently cross Davis Strait to the west coast of
Greenland during summer, and their range
may extend east to Denmark Strait and
Iceland.
The sei whales which appear in large num-
Sei Whale (Balaenoptera borealis)
The sei whale (Norwegian, pronounced
say) is an oceanic species rarely encountered
in protected, inshore waters or near the
coast. The vernacular name was given to the
species because its arrival off Finnmark
(Norway) used to coincide with that of the
seje or coalfish (Pollachius virens). Observations by whalers, particularly in the North
Atlantic, led them to suggest that sei whales
follow a less consistent migration schedule
than do most other rorquals. Their appearance on a local whaling ground, such as off
Iceland, can be "unpredictable" from one
year to the next.
The difficulty of identifying sei whales at
sea often makes it hard to evaluate reports
of sightings. Under the best of circumstances, the symmetrical pigmentation of the
sei whale's head and the single ridge along
the midline of the slightly arched, pointed
rostrum can be seen clearly. Like right
whales, sei whales are usually classified as
"skim" feeders. When feeding near the surface, their blows are evenly spaced over long
intervals. Their head breaks the surface at
a shallow angle, and the dorsal fin and back
are exposed for a comparatively long time
(Figure 12). The sei whale's baleen is grayish,
bers off Vancouver Island in June, July, and
August probably belong to a stock that
migrates along the American west coast. A
sei whale tagged off southern California in
November 1962 was killed off Vancouver
Island in August 1966.
Minke Whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata)
The minke whale is the smallest of the
baleen whales inhabiting Canadian waters.
It is widely distributed on the continental
shelf and usually encountered alone or in
small groups, often amongst pods of fin
whales. The blow is low and bushy, and thus
difficult to spot in rough seas. Young minke
whales sometimes approach stationary vessels, swimming under and around them close
alongside. However, they are not easy to
chase or follow due to their irregular surfacing pattern and frequent changes of
swimming direction.
The basic color pattern is black on the
dorsal surface and white on the ventral
surface, but like fin whales, most minke
whales have a complex array of subtler markings on the sides and back (Figure 13). These
take the form mainly of light gray patches
and swirls. The most distinctive marking is
a bold white patch on the otherwise-dark
flippers (Figure 14). Newborn minkes are
about 2.8 m long, and maximum adult
length is about 10 m.
Minke whales engage in aerial displays
much more often than their Balaenoptera
cousins. They make clean, arcuate leaps as
well as twisting breaches after circling rapidly
and tightly around a school of prey. They
use their short, mainly white baleen to capture a wide variety of organisms, including
fish, zooplankton, and squid. During summer months, dense concentrations of spawning capelin attract minke whales into bays
along the east coast of Newfoundland. They
are present there as early as May, and most
have left by early August.
Figure 12. The tall, scythe-shaped dorsal fin characteristic of a sei whale is clearly
seen in this photograph taken during a whale tagging cruise in the North
Atlantic sponsored by the Canadian government. Photograph by E.
Mitchell.
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Figure 13. A minke whale surfacing off Cap Gaspe in Forillon National Park, August
1981. Note how the dark back shades into light gray blazes on the sides.
Variation in this trunk pigmentation has been used to identify individual
whales off the west coast. Photograph by Diane Attendu.
Female minke whales reach sexual maturity at 7.3 m, males at 6.7-7.0 m. Breeding
in the Northern Hemisphere occurs mainly
during winter and spring. Gestation is
assumed to last 1O-IOYz months, and calves
are probably weaned before reaching 6
months of age. A high proportion (800,10 or
more) of adult females taken in some whale
fisheries have been found to be pregnant; so
the calving interval is probably one year in
many instances.
Minke whales are common during summer
in Ungava Bay, along the entire Atlantic
coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland, and
in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Bay of
Fundy. Winter sightings in the Caribbean
Sea suggest that some minke whales migrate
to lower latitudes at that season. Stranded
minke whales are reported with some
regularity along much of the eastern seaboard. They are accidentally trapped from
time to time in herring weirs in the Bay of
Fundy, and pieces of netting have been
found entangled in the baleen of some
stranded specimens.
In 1947 a fishery for small whales was
begun in eastern Newfoundland. Some of the
meat of minke whales was saved for human
consumption, but after 1954 most of it was
used to feed ranch mink. This fishery ended
in 1972. Between 1969 and 1972 Norwegian
pelagic whaling vessels hunted minke whales
in coastal waters off Labrador and
Newfoundland.
The distribution of minke whales along the
west coast of Canada is not as well known,
but they are present in most nearshore and
inshore areas during summer. Here, too,
they occasionally blunder into fishing gear,
such as salmon traps.
Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaeangliae)
Humpback whales are cosmopolitan
animals. They were abundant in all oceans
until whaling drove some populations to dangerously low levels. Today, the Northwest
Atlantic and Northeast Pacific are among the
few areas where sizeable humpback populations remain.
Humpbacks are well known to the public. Photographs of breaching individuals or
of mothers and calves underwater often
appear on posters and magazine covers.
Humpbacks grow to a maximum length of
about 16 m, and they are 4.5-5.0 m long at
birth. The humpback's head is marked by
rows of fleshy knobs, and there is a lumpy
protuberance at the front of the lower jaw.
The flippers, which have a scalloped leading edge, are very long; they can be almost
a third as long as the animal's entire body.
The flukes are distinctively shaped, with a
serrated rear margin divided by a deep notch.
The dorsal fin is what gives the humpback
its vernacular name. Although the fin can
vary greatly in shape, it sits on a hummock
or "hump" (Figure 15).
The humpback's skin is colonized by large
"acorn" barnacles (Coronula), especially on
the flukes, flippers, and chin. The general
body color is black. Many humpbacks
have all-white or mainly white flippers.
Humpbacks often fluke-up as they dive, so
it is possible to get photographs of the
undersides of the flukes. The variable blackand-white pigmentation pattern on the flukes
is distinctive for every individual and, especially when augmented by scars and deformities, provides a reliable means of individual
recognition.
13
In all parts of their range, humpbacks
migrate between high-latitude summer feeding grounds and subtropical winter breeding grounds. Most of the humpbacks that
feed in summer off eastern Canada spend
the winter in the West Indies, principally
on Silver and Navidad banks north of
Hispaniola. Some visit Bermuda on their way
north in spring. Although much of the
Northwest Atlantic humpback population
appears to mix on the breeding grounds,
groups of individuals seem to congregate on
separate feeding grounds year after year. One
of these feeding "substocks" apparently
does not go much farther north than the Gulf
of Maine and Scotian Shelf, but another
large "substock" occurs along the coasts
of Newfoundland and Labrador. Several
hundred humpbacks go to Davis Strait in
summer, and another group (which may be
related to the Davis Strait "substock")
occurs in Denmark Strait between Greenland
and Iceland.
In the eastern and central North Pacific
there are two major wintering areas. One
is along the coast of Baja California
and around the Revillagigedo Islands off
Mexico. The other is in Hawaii, where most
of the underwater photography of humpbacks has taken place. Individual whales
are known to use either of these grounds
in a given winter. One known individual
traveled from Hawaii to the coast of Vancouver Island, and another found in British
Columbia waters one summer was seen off
Figure 14. The distinctive white flipper
patch and the sharply
pointed snout of the minke
whale are seen as this
animal surfaces in the lower
Bay of Fundy. The white flipper appears to be part of a
disruptive pigmentation pattern on this, the smallest of
the balaenopterine group.
Photograph by Porter
Turnbull.
14
Underwater World
Figure 15. The "hump" comprising the base of the small dorsal fin on the humpback whale is clearly evident in this photograph taken in the North Pacific.
Photograph by G.C. Pike.
southeast Alaska the next. The humpback's
North Pacific summering grounds extend
from British Columbia to much of the
coastal Gulf of Alaska, the Bering Sea, and
the southern Chukchi Sea. Formerly, humpbacks were abundant along the west coast of
Vancouver Island as well as in protected
waters, including the Strait of Georgia.
In general, humpbacks are denizens of the
continental shelf and offshore banks. They
take advantage of concentrations of spawning fish such as capelin, herring, anchovies,
and sand lance, but they also prey heavily
on euphausiids and occasionally squid.
At times, they repeatedly lunge at the surface, exposing the front third of the body as
they capture their prey. Frequently, humpbacks create clouds or "nets" of bubbles
underwater to corral their prey; such maneuvers often end with the whale's mouth wide
open above the surface, the coarse black
baleen and pink palate plainly showing.
Small fish jump in many directions, to be
snatched up by attending seabirds.
Humpbacks are unrivaled among the
mysticetes as aerial acrobats. Bouts of
breaching, lobtailing, and flippering are
common on both the breeding grounds and
feeding grounds. On the breeding grounds,
adult males sometimes interact aggressively,
beating one another with the flukes, even
slamming and scraping against each other so
boisterously that the dorsal fins and fleshy
knobs on the head become ragged and
bloody.
Both sexes attain sexual maturity at a
length of about 11-12 m. Studies of living
humpbacks, using photo-identification techniques, have shown that calves are sometimes
born to adult females in successive years. The
average calving interval is more likely two
years, however. Most births in the Northern
Hemisphere occur in winter (J anuaryMarch), after about one year of gestation.
Calves are suckled for about 10 months and
thus are fully weaned before the breeding
season following their birth. During the first
few weeks of life, humpback calves are rarely
separated from their mothers by a distance
of more than 10 m.
The International Whaling Commission
has given humpback whales in the North
Atlantic full protection from commercial
whaling since 1955, and in the North Pacific
since 1965. Today, there are at least 2,000
humpbacks in the Northeast Pacific, with
about 1,000 wintering in Hawaii each year.
In the Northwest Atlantic, there are at least
3,000, perhaps many more, humpbacks
today. This population appears to be
recovering.
Sperm Whale (Physeter catodon)
If there is an archetypal whale, it is the
sperm whale, the largest of the odontocetes
and the most widely distributed, most abundant of the great whales. Moby Dick, the
legendary antagonist of Herman Melville's
classic novel, was a bull sperm whale. Sperm
whales are generally found in deep water, so
they are most likely to be found along the
edge of the continental shelf or over canyons
and deep basins between banks, as well as
on the high seas.
The sperm whale is the only living whale
whose nostrils are not situated in a position
well behind the snout. Its single blowhole,
an S-shaped slit, is at the front of the snout,
distinctly left of center. The position of the
blowhole causes the bushy blow to angle forward and to the left, which makes it possible
to identify sperm whales even at a distance
of some miles. The body is dominated by the
huge head, which is squarish in profile.
Functional teeth are present only in the narrow, underslung lower jaw (Figure 16). These
massive chunks of
were smoothed,
engraved, and decorated with intricate pat-
terns or scenes by nineteenth-century whalemen, a traditional American art form known
as scrimshaw.
There is a substantial difference in size
between male and female sperm whales.
Males grow to lengths of 18 m or more,
while females are rarely more than
12 m long. Old bulls can weigh in excess of
50 tons. Length at birth is about 3.5-5.0 m;
weight, 750-1,000 kg.
Sperm whales are basically brownish gray
to black. Calves are lightly pigmented but
soon darken to the adult color. Most sperm
whales have a white zone around the mouth,
as well as a light gray or whitish region on
the ventrum. Adult males are heavily scarred
on the head, evidence of aggressive encounters with one another and with large squid.
Sperm whales subsist on squid, octopuses,
deepsea fishes, and a variety of other fishes.
Only adult bulls are likely to attack the giant
squid (Architeuthis sp.) which lives at great
depths. Yankee sperm whalers sometimes
confirmed that they had arrived on the whaling grounds by noting pieces of squid floating on the sea surface.
The basic social unit of sperm whales is
the mixed school, which contains up to 50
or more individuals. Adult females accompanied by their offspring, including young
whales of both sexes, are found in such
schools. Bachelor schools formed by maturing males remain apart from the mixed
schools, and adult males travel alone or in
small, loosely associated bands. Large males
associate with mixed schools during part of
the year, presumably for breeding purposes.
Usually only one of these "schoolmasters"
or "harem masters" is present in the mixed
school at a given time.
This segregated social structure allows
sperm whales to partition the food resources
on which they depend. Females and juveniles
rarely venture north of about SOON latitude
except in areas influenced by warm currents.
Bulls, on the other hand, migrate during
summer into subarctic and even arctic
regions, where their foraging efforts are not
in direct competition with those of the
females and young.
Length at sexual maturity is about 9 m for
females and 12 m for males. The latter,
however, probably are not socially mature
(i.e. successful in reproduction) until some
time well after the attainment of sexual
maturity. Breeding can occur any time
between late winter and late summer, but
generally peaks during late spring or summer. The gestation period is 14-16 months,
and lactation lasts for 1-2 years. Adult
females give birth at 3 to 5-year intervals.
Sperm whales are long-lived and may reach
ages of 45-60 years.
Sperm whales are common off both coasts
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of Canada during summer and fall. In the
Atlantic, some bulls migrate along the
continental slope at least as far north as
Hudson Strait, where local concentrations
can be found off Resolution Island. This
migration consists almost entirely of large
males. Sperm whales seem not to enter the
Gulf of St. Lawrence in large numbers.
Long-distance movements across the North
Atlantic, between southern Nova Scotia and
the coast of Spain and between Iceland and
the Azores, have been documented.
Off British Columbia, mixed and bachelor
schools occur seasonally on the old whaling
grounds as far north as SooN, apparently tied
to the ISoC surface isotherm. Mixed aggregations of 50-ISO sperm whales have been
seen there during April, May, and early
June. Females with near-term fetuses sometimes re-appear in August and early September. Bulls are present year-round in deep
waters off the British Columbia coast. Small
numbers of sperm whales enter Hecate
Strait, Dixon Entrance, Queen Charlotte
Sound, and some of the broad waterways of
the Inside Passage.
The sperm whale is of great commercial
interest. Its oil differs from baleen whale
oil in that it consists chiefly of waxes rather
than fats. Sperm oil's viscosity is less affected
by temperature variations tfian are those of
fatty oils, so it is valuable as a lubricant.
Spermaceti, a waxy liquid found in the head,
has been widely used in the manufacture of
certain cosmetics and wax candles. As much
as 150 barrels of spermaceti and sperm oil
has been rendered from a very large bull.
Ambergris, a substance produced in the
alimentary tract of some sperm whales and
occasionally discovered as a waxy lump
floating on the sea surface or washed up
on beaches, is used as a fixative in making
long-lasting perfumes.
An intensive hunt for sperm whales began
from sailing vessels out of New England
ports during the early eighteenth century,
and by the middle of the nineteenth century
it had spread throughout the southern ocean
and the North Pacific. This worldwide chase,
which eventually came to include a fleet of
large modern factory ships, has all but ended
now. Only a few shore stations continue to
catch significant numbers of sperm whales.
There are two species of small cetacean,
closely related to the sperm whale, which
should be mentioned here briefly. Neither
grows longer than about 4 m; both resemble the sperm whale in that they have a short
underslung lower jaw and a squarish or
bulbous head. The pygmy sperm whale
(Kogia breviceps) and the dwarf sperm whale
(K. simus) live mainly in the temperate and
tropical regions of the world oceans, and
there is little evidence of their frequent
15
Figure 16. A 16.85 m sperm whale landed at the South Dildo, Newfoundland,
whaling station, 18 June 1972. Note the sockets for lower teeth in the
toothless upper jaw. The few throat creases are typical of sperm whales.
The scarring on the head may be from battles with other large males.
Photograph by James G. Mead.
presence in Canada. Their occurrence along
the Canadian coast is known mainly from
strandings. A dead pygmy sperm whale was
found under the ice in Halifax harbour in
January 1920, and another decayed carcass
was found on Sable Island in January 1969.
A female dwarf sperm whale stranded alive
on the coast of Pachena Bay, Vancouver
Island, in September 1981.
Beaked Whales (Ziphiidae)
This diverse family of whales is represented in Canadian waters by four genera:
Berardius, Hyperoodon, Ziphius, and
Mesoplodon. Ziphiids, or beaked whales, are
typically pelagic in distribution and rarely
sighted on the continental shelf. Most appear
to be deep divers, and squid or deep-sea fish
comprise the bulk of their diet.
All beaked whales in the Northern
Hemisphere have a pair of deep grooves on
the throat, which partially converge to form
a forward-pointing V. Their flukes are not
normally separated from each other by a
well-formed notch. The beak, which can be
short and ill-defined as in Cuvier's beaked
whale (Ziphius cavirostris) or long and cylindrical as in Baird's beaked whale (Berardius
bairdii), is equipped with usually 2 but no
more than 4 functional teeth, situated toward
the front of the lower jaw. In Mesoplodon,
only adult males have erupted teeth, and in
some of these the teeth protrude outside the
closed mouth, serving as formidable tusks
that are probably used during fights between
males.
Baird's beaked whale, measuring nearly
13 m in length, is the largest of the beaked
whales. It lives only in the North Pacific,
where it is known from as far south as northern Baja California, Mexico, to as far north
as the central Bering Sea. Shore-based
whalers frequently encountered groups of
10-20 Baird's beaked whales, mainly adult
males, on the
grounds west of
Vancouver Island. The whales were seen during all months from May to September, but
most regularly in August.
The only other beaked whale that has been
of any commercial significance in Canada is
the northern bottlenose whale (Hyperoodon
ampullatus). It is endemic in the North
Atlantic, where it is widely distributed in cold
temperate and subarctic regions. Off North
America, the two best-known areas of concentration are at the mouth of Hudson Strait
and in a deep canyon east of Sable Island,
called The Gully. It is in the latter area that
67 bottlenose whales were caught during the
1960s by whalers out of Blandford, Nova
Scotia. Bottlenose whales were also hunted
in Davis Strait by British arctic whalers during the nineteenth century, and 818 of them
were taken off Labrador during 1969-1971
by Norwegian pelagic whalers. Bottlenose
whales dive for longer periods than most
other whales; timed dives lasting 90 minutes
or more have been reported.
The other beaked whales that occur in
Canadian waters have not been hunted here,
and they are rarely seen alive at sea. Most
of what is known about their distribution in
16
Canada comes from the few stranded specimens which have come to the attention of
scientists. Cuvier's beaked whale and Blainville's beaked whale (Mesoplodon densirostris) are cosmopolitan in temperate and
tropical seas, and they can be expected to
occur irregularly on both the Atlantic and
Pacific coasts of southern Canada. In addition, Sowerby's beaked whale (M. bidens)
and Gervais' beaked whale (M. mirus) are
known from the east coast; Hubbs' beaked
whale (M. carlhubbsi) and Stejneger's
beaked whale (M. stejnegeri), from the
west coast.
Killer Whale (Orcin us orca)
The killer whale is a familiar sight to
mariners in British Columbia, where the species has been studied more closely than in any
other part of the world. In 1973, Canadian
scientists began compiling photographs of
killer whales in the protected waters of
southwest British Columbia and northwest
Was-hington. Using naturally-occurring
nicks, scars, and growth patterns on the
dorsal fin, and the configuration of the
lightly-pigmented "saddle patch" behind the
dorsal fin, it proved nossible to identify
individuals, track their movements, and
monitor associations among the whales.
Killer whales are about 2.4 m long at birth.
Males can grow to lengths of 9 m and
weights of almost 5 tons, while females
generally do not grow longer than 8 m or
weigh more than 3 tons. Sexual maturity is
generally reached in British Columbia males
at a body length of 5.8 m and an age of at
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least 12 years; females, 4.9 m and at least
6.7 years. Adult males are easily distinguished from juveniles and adult females by
the height and shape of the dorsal fin
(Figure 17). By the time males reach sexual
maturity, the fin is slightly over I m high;
the fin of adult females is usually only
0.5-0.75 m high. The female's fin remains
hooked, or curved, throughout life, but the
adult male's loses its curved aspect and
becomes triangular with straightened edges.
The flippers of killer whales are shaped
like broad, rounded paddles. They are often
visible as the whale breaches and falls onto
its side with a loud smack. The killer whale's
conical head is dominated by the large
mouth, lined with piercing teeth used for
gripping and tearing prey, but not for chewing. Like most other cetaceans, killer whales
swallow their prey whole or in large pieces.
Gestation in killer whales lasts about
15 months, and females nurse their young
for at least a year. Killer whales in British
Columbia have a calving interval of 3 years
or more. The population was judged in 1980
to be increasing at a rate of about 2.5 percent a year.
The public attitude toward killer whales
changed dramatically during the 1960s.
Before then, they were feared by many
boaters and resented by fishermen who
noticed the whales' appetite for herring and
salmon. In 1964, the Vancouver Public
Aquarium brought a young female into
captivity that lived long enough to demonstrate the feasibility of maintaining killer
whales in captivity. The next year another
Figure 17. Part of a pod of killer whales (J-pod) in Puget Sound, September 1978.
Note the high, erect dorsal fin of the adult male in the foreground.
Photograph by Randi Olsen.
whale accidentally caught in a gillnet at
Namu, British Columbia, was towed to
Seattle, Washington, where it was kept in a
floating pen. During his year in confinement,
"Namu" proved docile and trainable. Soon
most major marine aquariums in North
America and Europe had at least one killer
whale on display. Killer whales live peacably in tanks with bottlenose dolphins and
other animals on which they prey in the wild.
A population of about 260 killer whales
frequents coastal waters surrounding Vancouver Island. About 23 percent are mature
males, 34 percent mature females, 39 percent
juveniles, and the rest (4 percent) calves. This
local population has a complex social structure. There are 30 pods, or sets of related
individuals, which remain together on a
long-term basis. Pods can be as large as
50 animals, but usually number from 5 to 20.
Several pods may travel together for a few
days or weeks, but there is no permanent
exchange of individuals. The British Columbia population is made up of three distinct
communities. A southern community consists of three pods, code named J, K, and L,
totalling about 80 animals. Their year-round
range is limited to the inshore waters south
of Discovery Passage and some offshore
areas west of southern Vancouver Island.
J-pod's range extends southward into Puget
Sound. A northern community, consisting of
12 pods or about 135 animals, occurs mainly
inshore north of Discovery Passage. The
third community is comprised of 15 small
transient, or non-resident, pods. These pods
seem to have a less well-defined range than
the resident pods.
Since the members of a pod are often
dispersed while foraging for food, communication is apparently maintained largely
through acoustic exchange. The three basic
sound-types produced by killer whales are:
(1) short, high-frequency pulses or clicks
used mainly for echolocation; (2) somewhat
lower-frequency "whistles"; and (3) pulsed
"screams" which sound harsh and metallic
to the human ear. The latter two groups of
sounds are thought to playa role in communication. At least in British Columbia, each
killer whale pod has a slightly different
acoustic repertoire, or dialect, which probably facilitates pod integrity when the ranges
of two or more pods overlap.
Killer whales are skilled predators. Their
diet includes nearly anything that swims.
Turtles, ducks, and many kinds of fish and
squid are eaten, as are seals, sea lions,
porpoises, and whales. The preferences of a
given pod seem to depend on where it lives.
For example, some of the resident pods in
British Columbia and Washington subsist
largely on salmon and herring. In the Antarctic, some killer whales regularly prey upon
minke whales and seals. Although killer
Underwater World
17
whales in some areas attack the larger
whales, such attacks do not always result in
a kill. Like wolves, killer whales rely on coordinated movement and cooperative hunting
techniques to kill their larger prey.
Although present on the Canadian east
coast and in the Arctic, killer whales are seen
less frequently and less predictably there than
in British Columbia's inshore waters.
Long-finned Pilot Whale (Globicephala
melaena)
This medium-size toothed whale, known
locally as the pothead in Newfoundland and
the black fish in some other areas, is especially abundant along the Atlantic coast of
Canada. A closely related species, the shortfinned pilot whale (G. macrorhynchus), is
present in the more tropical waters of the
Atlantic. In the Pacific, it is present in tropical waters and occasionally reaches the
shores of British Columbia and Alaska,
associating with warm currents.
The most distinctive external features of
the pilot whale are a high, rounded forehead
(thus the vernacular name pothead) and a
thick, broad-based dorsal fin which is
unmistakable in profile. The short beak is
overhung in large adults by the bulbous
melon. Males are considerably larger than
females; maximum lengths are 6.2 m and
5.4 m, respectively. Very large males may
weigh close to 3 tons. At birth, most pilot
whales are 1.65-1.9 m long.
Although at first glance adult pilot whales
appear uniformly blackish-gray or blackishbrown, they do have certain consistent, if
rather subtle markings. There is a wedge of
speckled dark gray on the back behind the
dorsal fin, often referred to as a saddlemark. A dark gray streak, shaped like an
elongate teardrop, is often present behind
each eye. The ventral surface is marked by
a gray-to-white patch along the midline
which widens to form an anchor-shaped chevron design on the throat. Calves are light
gray, their markings muted.
Pilot whales are among the most gregarious of cetaceans. They often travel in herds
of several hundred, closely coordinating their
activities and movements. Squid, specifically
short-finned squid (Illex illecebrosus) off
Newfoundland, are the principal prey of
pilot whales. The whales' distribution is
thus governed largely by the squid migrations. Pilot whales live throughout the year
in deep water, and are especially abundant
on the continental slope. Their appearance
on the shelf and in shallow coastal waters,
particulary along the east coast of Newfoundland in Trinity, Bonavista, Conception, and Notre Dame bays during summer,
is explained by the arrival there of dense
swarms of squid.
Figure 18. Long-finned pilot whales stranded at River John, Nova Scotia, August 1918.
Photograph by E. Clay Blair/Public Archives Canada, copyright (Call.)
1966-94, PA 30300.
The phenomenon of mass stranding has
always puzzled those who study the habits
of whales. This tendency to come ashore and
die in groups is displayed mainly by the
highly social odontocetes. On the east coast
of Canada, nearly all mass strandings involve
herds of pilot whales (Figure 18). There is
no evidence that the whales involved in such
mass strandings are diseased or afflicted by
exceptionally heavy parasite burdens. It has
been suggested that since strandings most
often occur along gently shelving coasts,
bottom topography plays a major role,
perhaps reducing the effectiveness of the
whales' biosonar navigation system.
Strangely enough, however, attempts by
well-meaning onlookers to refloat the
animals by towing them clear of the beach
are generally unsuccessful. More often than
not, the whales simply return directly to
shore. This may mean that social or psychological factors, such as response to stress calls
by animals still beached, are what trigger and
maintain this strangely self-destructive
behaviour. In addition to eastern Newfoundland, mass strandings of pilot whales have
occurred on Sable and Cape Breton islands,
Nova Scotia, and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence
and Bay of Fundy.
Life-history parameters have been estimated from a large sample of pilot whales
killed in Trinity Bay during the 1950s.
Females reach sexual maturity at about 6
years of age and a mean length of 3.65 m;
males at about 12 years and 4.9 m. The
breeding season is prolonged, with most
births occurring sometime between May
and November after a gestation period of
15Yz-16 months. Although calves may begin
taking solid food at 6 months, they may not
be fully weaned until nearly 2 years of age.
The most popular and effective method of
capturing pilot whales in Newfoundland was
driving. Beginning in late July, the whalers
would look for herds of pilot whales following the squid inshore. In small vessels, they
would intercept the herds of whales and drive
them slowly toward shore. After driving
them into shallow water, the whalers killed
the animals with lances, then towed them
ashore where the meat and oil could be
processed. In these drives, entire herds,
usually containing individuals of both
sexes and various ages, were dispatched.
The fishery for minke whales and other
medium-size cetaceans established in eastern
Newfoundland in 1947 soon came to depend
mainly on pilot whales, the meat being sold
to mink ranches.
During the period of organized and intensive catching at Newfoundland, 1947-1971,
approximately 54,000 pilot whales were captured. The highest catch in a single season
was nearly 10,000 in 1956. A fairly consistent decline in the annual catch after 1956
has been interpreted as evidence that the
local stock was depleted. An estimated
14,000 pilot whales were present off eastern
Newfoundland within 150 km of shore in
1980, based on results of an aerial survey.
White Whale or Beluga (Delphinapterus
leucas)
White whales, or belugas as they are often
called, are among Canada's best-known
whales. They are endemic to the Northern
Hemisphere, where they occur in many discrete stocks throughout the Arctic and
Subarctic regions. There are at least five
stocks in Canada: the Mackenzie Delta
stock, the Lancaster Sound stock, the
Cumberland Sound stock, the Hudson Bay/
Hudson StraitiUngava Bay stock or stocks,
and the St. Lawrence stock. The present
18
Underwater World
world population consists of at least several
tens of thousands, although some stocks
have been severely reduced by overharvesting.
The distribution and abundance of white
whales in Canada are summarized in
Table 2. The occurrence of belugas along the
coast of British Columbia would be very
exceptional. The nearest population is centered in Cook Inlet, south-central Alaska.
There are a few isolated records of individual
belugas reaching coastal waters of Washington, and a herd of 21 was seen several years
ago during late May in Yakutat Bay, southeast Alaska. Presumably such animals are
emigrants from the Cook Inlet stock, which
numbers only a few hundred. Occasionally,
solitary belugas or very small groups are
reported along the coasts of Newfoundland,
Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, and south
along the U.S. coast as far as Long Island,
New York. Many of these "strays" are probably from the St. Lawrence stock, although
Newfoundland records may involve "strays"
from stocks along the Labrador coast or
farther north.
Male white whales, which are somewhat
larger than females, can grow to lengths of
5 m and weigh more than 2,000 kg.
However, the average adult size is smaller,
perhaps 0.5-1.5 tons and 3.0-4.5 m. The
Table 2. Major stocks of white whales in Canada.
CENTER OF DISTRIBUTION
Winter
Bering Sea
West Greenland
Davis Strait &
Mouth of
Hudson Strait?
Hudson Strait
Hudson Strait
Hudson Strait
St. Lawrence River
and Gulf
Initial
Population
Summer
Mackenzie Delta,
Beaufort Sea,
Amundsen Gulf
Lancaster Sound,
Prince Regent
Inlet
Cumberland Sound
Ungava Bay
Eastern Hudson Bay
Western Hudson Bay
St. Lawrence River
and Gulf
Current Population
(Year)
?
7,000 (1979)
?
6,300-18,600 (1981)
5,000 +
600 (1979)
1,000 +
5,000 +
?
5,000 +
Low hundreds (1981)
350 or less' (1981)
5,000-10,000 (1965)
360-715 (1983)
* Applies only to a portion of stock's summer distribution.
1.5 m long newborns are generally gray or
brownish. Juveniles are gray to bluish. After
the attainment of sexual maturity, the body
color changes to all white except for the edges
of the flippers and flukes, which retain dark
pigment.
Well-fed belugas have a lumpy appearance, with folds of fat along the sides of the
Figure 19. A white whale surfacing in a crack during break-up in Lancaster Sound,
July 1983. Photograph copyright Gregory Silber.
body. The flippers are broad and, in adult
males, curl up at the tip. The flukes of adults
have a convex rear margin. There is no dorsal fin, but a low, serrated ridge is present
along the midline where a fin occurs on other
species. White whales can radically change
the shape of their bulbous melon (Figure 19).
The short, broad beak is cleft slightly in the
center. There are 40-44 simple conical teeth
evenly distributed in the jaws. Sharp initially,
these teeth eventually become badly worn,
and many are lost by injury or infection.
The sailors' term "sea canary" is
appropriately applied to the beluga, as an
underwater chorus of chirps and creaks is
invariably heard in the presence of a pod.
Experiments have shown them to be adept
at echolocation, and judging by the variety
of sounds they make, they are also highly
communicative. Their sociable nature is
manifest in the large size of herds, including up to several thousand individuals, that
congregate in river mouths during summer.
Most belugas migrate, but the distance
covered varies greatly among stocks. For
example, the Mackenzie Delta stock, estimated to number about 7,000, leaves its wintering grounds in the Bering Sea during late
April to mid-June, heading north through
Bering Strait and east along the north coast
of Alaska. Some animals travel in leads
through the pack ice far offshore. The first
arrivals reach the Mackenzie Delta by midMay. Numbers in the estuary build up
through July, then decrease in August and
September as the whales begin returning
westward. In contrast, the St. Lawrence
belugas are relatively stationary. At least
some of them overwinter at the Saguenay
River confluence; others find refuge in
patches of open water and broken pack ice
elsewhere in the estuary and gulf. The limits
Underwater World
of their summer distribution are from Ileaux-Coudres in the west to Natashquan and
Baie des Chaleurs in the east. There is no evidence for a seasonal migration out of the
Gulf through either Cabot Strait or the Strait
of Belle Isle.
Ice cover appears to be the decisive factor
in the distribution of most white whale
stocks. At the floe edge in Lancaster Sound
during late spring, belugas (along with narwhals, bowheads, and various pinnipeds)
arrive with an apparent sense of urgency.
They quickly penetrate the cracks and leads
formed in the rotting ice. Belugas can break
through thin ice to breathe, and they often
rest in ice "domes" which form around their
bodies while at the surface. Occasionally they
miscalculate and are cut off from open
water. Such entrapment can be fatal. If polar
bears or native hunters do not find and kill
the whales, they are likely to starve or suffocate. However, sometimes a shift in the wind
direction or an early break-up allows the
whales to escape.
Polar bears certainly hunt white whales,
and sometimes kill them. Their success
undoubtedly depends upon how confined the
belugas are in a crack op pool of open water.
Killer whales are probably a more serious
and regular threat to belugas, but few eyewitness accounts of attacks have been published. Their close association with ice may
give belugas some degree of protection
because killer whales are unlikely to follow
them far into the hazardous ice fields.
Belugas prey upon many kinds of fish, as
well as squids, octopuses, marine worms,
crustaceans, and mollusks. In a study of
food habits in the St. Lawrence, at least
50 different species were identified in
stomach contents. Belugas are known to prey
on commercially valuable fishes such as
salmon, cod, and herring, but contrary to
the views expressed by local fishermen,
St. Lawrence belugas are not a major predator of cod or salmon. In the St. Lawrence
they eat mainly capelin early in the summer,
then switch to sand lance in August and
September.
The St. Lawrence stock of white whales
evidently was depleted as a result of overhunting and today numbers only about 500
animals, compared to at least 5,000 in the
late nineteenth century. The degree to which
environmental factors such as the damming
of important tributary rivers along the North
Shore, pollution, or vessel traffic are affecting St. Lawrence belugas is unclear.
Several other Canadian stocks are in need
of special protection. The Cumberland
Sound stock, which contained at least 5,000
animals in the early 1920s, has been reduced
to no more than about 500-700 individuals
today. Other areas of concern are Ungava
Bay, Hudson Strait, and eastern Hudson
19
Figure 20. About 80-90 white whales stranded at low tide after a whale drive in Clearwater Fiord, Cumberland Sound, early 1920s. Photograph courtesy
Hudson's Bay Company Archives, D.FTRI19, fo. 432A, top.
Bay. There, too, the white whale stocks
were greatly overtaxed by commercial drive
fisheries earlier in the present century
(Figure 20).
Belugas have always been an important
subsistence resource for the Inuit and for certain northern Indian tribes. Kittigaruit (also
spelled Kittegazuit on modern maps), located
at the mouth of East Channel, was apparently the largest Inuit village in the Mackenzie River area, and probably in all of Arctic
Canada during the mid-nineteenth century.
It had a summer population of 800 to 1,000
people, the Kittegaryumiut. The backbone
of their economy and culture was the annual
communal beluga hunt which took place
from mid-July to early September. In the
summer of 1848 the Arctic explorer Sir John
Richardson was met by no less than 200
kayaks from Kittigaruit. This remarkably
large fleet was used to drive herds of belugas
onto sandbars where they could be slaughtered. After being killed, the whales were
butchered on the beach, their meat smoked
or air-dried, and their blubber rendered
to oil by cooking over driftwood fires.
Although the settlement site at Kittigaruit has
been abandoned for many years, the presentday residents of the Mackenzie Delta still
hunt white whales and process the meat in
much the same way.
A unique method of catching white whales
was developed by early French colonists
along the shores of the St. Lawrence River.
The peche aux marsouins (beluga fishery)
was conducted using specially designed traps
or weirs, strategically placed to intercept
groups of whales as they moved close to
shore. Rows of evenly spaced poles "guided"
the whales into a cuI de sac, where the fishermen could easily dispatch them with lances
at low tide. Several hundred animals were
sometimes taken in a single tide.
The Hudson's Bay Company maintained
a lively interest in beluga fishing almost from
the establishment of their first trading post
in Canada during the seventeenth century.
A shipment of 28 casks of beluga oil was
made from Churchill to England in 1689.
Thereafter, whaling was attempted at virtu-
ally every post situated near a concentration
of white whales. If possible, the whales were
driven into shallow water where they could
be netted, shot, or harpooned.
Many white whales were also caught by the
crews of Scottish and American commercial
whaling vessels in Davis Strait and the Lancaster Sound region. More than 20,000 were
killed there during the period 1868-1911.
Most of these were taken in drives conducted
in Cumberland Sound or at Elwin Bay in
Prince Regent Inlet. White whale hides and
oil initially supplemented the bowhead oil
and baleen which attracted the whalers to the
Arctic in the first place. But as bowheads
became more scarce, belugas and other
smaller game increased in importance.
Beluga hides can be tanned to produce a fine
and durable leather. It was used to make
bootlaces, carriage covers, and mailbags.
The oil was used mainly for illumination and
lubrication.
A plant erected at Churchill in 1949
processed white whales during the 6-week
summer hunting season. Local Inuit, Cree,
and Metis, as well as other residents, could
purchase licenses to hunt; they were paid by
the foot for whales delivered to the factory.
The main product initially was minced,
frozen
of carcasses shipped by rail
to mink ranches in the Prairie Provinces. A
native-run commercial netting operation was
begun at Whale Cove, northwest Hudson
Bay, in 1961 to produce canned or frozen
meat and muktuk (whale skin with a thin
layer of adhering blubber), most of which
was sold to Inuit settlements. In 1970,
unacceptably high levels of mercury were
discovered in the white whale meat, and the
fishery was ordered to close.
Since 1962, white whale hunting in Canada
has been controlled by Beluga Protection
Regulations issued under the Fisheries Act.
Only resident Indians and Inuit are allowed
to hunt without a license. The killing of
calves, and females
by calves,
is forbidden. Trade or barter of white whale
is allowed within the Northwest
Territories, bur such products cannot be
are
from
Underwater World
20
Table 3. Reported landed catch of white whales in Canada, 1974-1984.
Year
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
Western
Arctic
184
154
148
127
144
85
218
126
85
Eastern
Arctic
239
140
239
286
161
200
133
232/252 3
191
116
Central
Arctic
28
15
Western
Hudson Bay
101
146
191
118
105
124
211
158
268
423
No. Que. 1
668
471
546
682
297
435
432
297
344
294
286
Total
1,0722
896
1,085
1,307
703
884
774
986/1006 3
819
778
941
Estimates of catch; Rep. into Whal. Commn 31:531-538; Taqralik July-August 1985;
note that catches by Povungnituk and Ivujivik for 1974-1980 and by Povungnituk for
1981-1984 are not included in the estimates.
2 Exclusive of the catch in western Hudson Bay.
3 Reported catch for Igloolik was 60-80.
1
ail forms of hunting in the Gulf of St.
Lawrence and in the St. Lawrence River and
its tributaries. The St. Lawrence stock
presently helps to sustain the whalewatching
tourist industry in the e:;tuary.
White whales were among the first cetacean species to be maintained in captivity.
A number were exported alive during the
second half of the nineteenth century. They
came from the weir fisheries in the St.
Lawrence, and most of them were destined
for makeshift aquariums in Boston, New
York, or London. Although survival was
poor initially, it has improved greatly in
recent years. Today, most specimens brought
into captivity are from Churchill, Manitoba.
Native hunters there have developed a technique for isolating an individual from its
pod, driving it into shallow water, and
lassoing it by hand. Whales caught in this
manner are cradled in a canvas stretcher and
transported to shore alongside an outboardpowered freight canoe. They are then placed
in a holding tank before being airlifted to the
USA, Europe, or Japan. The Vancouver
Public Aquarium is the ony facility in
Canada with live belugas presently on
display.
The reported landed catch of white whales
in Canada from 1974 to 1984 is shown in
Table 3.
Narwhal (Monodon monoceros)
Like the white whale, its closest relative,
the narwhal is confined to the northern
extremes of the Northern Hemisphere. The
narwhal's habitat requirements seem to be
more specific than the beluga's, and thus
its range is more restricted. Because both
species prey on many of the same types of
organisms, they are potential competitors.
However, during summer at least, narwhals
tend to occupy deep bays and fiords;
whereas, white whales congregate in shallow,
relatively warm estuaries. The best-known
and probably largest narwhal population in
the world inhabits the deep inlets, sounds,
and channels of the eastern Canadian Arctic
and northwest Greenland.
The narwhal's highly modified dentition
is its most distinctive attribute. Two adult
teeth are rooted in the upper jaw. In females,
both usually remain embedded, leaving the
animal functionally toothless. In males, the
left tooth erupts through the gum at the front
of the jaw and grows into a straight, tapered,
spiraled tusk up to 3 m long (Figure 21).
Occasionally, females develop one or two
external tusks, and a small percentage of
males become "double-tuskers". The function of the male narwhal's formidable tusk
has long been debated. It is now generally
agreed that the tusk serves a role in aggressive interaction among adult males, although
details of the behavior involved in its use are
unknown. Tusk-crossing or "fencing" above
and below the surface has been observed.
In overall body size and shape, narwhals
resemble belugas. In the Canadian Arctic,
males reach physical maturity at a length
of about 4.7 m when they weigh about
1,600 kg; females at 4.15 m and 1,000 kg.
Narwhals are about 1.6 m long and weigh
just over 80 kg at birth. The body color
changes with age, from evenly light gray at
birth to dark gray or almost black in juvenile
stages and mottled at maturity (Figure 22).
Adults, especially males, become white ventrally and laterally but retain dark pigment
on the back, head, neck, and edges of the
flippers and flukes. Very old bulls can be
mostly white.
The narwhal's summer distribution in
Canada is centered in Lancaster Sound and
its adjacent waters, including Prince Regent
Inlet, Barrow Strait, and Peel Sound, and
in Jones Sound. Especially large numbers
occur in Admiralty Inlet and the Pond InletEclipse Sound-Navy Board Inlet-Milne Inlet
complex, where narwhals have long been
hunted by the Inuit. During fall the Lancaster Sound animals migrate south in Baffin
Bay, and they overwinter in the broken pack
ice or along the edges of fast ice as far south
as Disko Bay on the east and Hudson Strait
on the west. Narwhals are also found during summer in deep waters of northern Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait, and Foxe Basin; it
is not known whether the animals overwinter
in these areas and thus comprise a separate
resident stock. Rarely, narwhals wander as
far south as the coast of Newfoundland.
There is some fossil evidence that narwhals
were present in the Gulf of St. Lawrence a
few thousand years ago. 'Very few narwhals
have been recorded in the western Canadian
Arctic.
Narwhals are gregarious. Pods of three to
four or sometimes as many as 20 individuals
congregate in close proximity and in this way
form herds of several hundred or even thousands of animals. Pods sometimes consist of
individuals of the same sex and age, but
Figure 21. The long tusks of three narwhals silhouetted against the water and sky
in Lancaster Sound, July 1983. Photograph copyright Gregory Silber.
Underwater World
Figure 22. Close view of a young narwhal with a short tusk at the floe edge in
Lancaster Sound, July 1983. The more extensive white mottling on two
whales nearby·suggests that they are larger, older individuals. Photograph
copyright Gregory Silber.
mixed groups are also seen. During their
westward spring migration in Pond Inlet and
Lancaster Sound, groups of adult males head
the procession, followed by females and
young. Later in the summer, narwhals are
segregated into groups of immature males,
groups of mature females and calves, and
groups of tusk-bearing adult males. There is
some evidence that the bulls remain farther
offshore, while females with calves penetrate
far inside embayments where waters are
relatively calm.
The size of the narwhal population in
Canadian waters during summer has been
estimated as over 13,000. There is currently
no way of knowing how the present population size compares to that of earlier times.
In spring (June-July) at the Pond Inlet floe
edge, narwhals dive under the fast ice in pursuit of arctic cod, a staple item in their diet.
Later, as they move through the inlet toward
their main summering grounds, they prey on
halibut, shrimp, and squid. Narwhals are
deep divers, and the pursuit of squid and
halibut probably takes them to depths well
below 400 m.
Narwhals face many of the same ecological problems as belugas. Killer whales, polar
bears, and rarely even walruses attack them.
Ice entrapment makes them vulnerable to
predation, starvation, or suffocation.
The life history of narwhals and belugas
appears to be similar in some respects. In the
absence of direct evidence, some scientists
have estimated the narwhal's vital parameters by inference from the beluga's, since
the latter has been more extensively studied.
Narwhals breed mainly in mid-April, and
most calves are born in mid-July. Lactation
probably lasts for well over a year, and the
average calving interval is probably three
years.
Several unsuccessful attempts were made
in 1969-1970 to bring live narwhals into captivity. A small ophaned calf from Grise Fiord
was airlifted to the New York Aquarium but
died after a month of confinement. The Vancouver Public Aquarium captured six narwhals in 1970 and transported them across
the continent. All died within a few months,
mainly from bacterial or viral infections.
Narwhals have been hunted by the Inuit
for many centuries, mainly for meat, muktuk, and sinew used as thread. During the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the
arrival of European and American whalers
and merchants made narwhal tusk ivory
valuable as a trade commodity. The commercial whalers killed some narwhals themselves,
but large amounts of ivory were also bartered
from the natives, especially during the first
quarter of the twentieth century on north
Baffin Island.
21
There are three types of hunt conducted
by the narwhal hunters of Pond Inlet: the
floe-edge hunt from mid-June to mid-July,
the ice-crack hunt from late July to early
August, and the open-water hunt in August
and September. During the floe-edge and icecrack hunts, the animals are shot by hunters
standing on the ice. Carcasses that do not
sink are retrieved with the aid of a boat or
a harpoon and line. During the open-water
hunt, narwhals are chased in outboardpowered boats and canoes. Once driven into
shallow water, they are shot. Harpoons are
sometimes attached to wounded animals to
facilitate retrieval.
The Canadian government introduced
interim Narwhal Protection Regulations
under the Fisheries Act in 1971. These made
hunting by anyone except the Inuit illegal and
set a maximum catch limit of five narwhals
per year for each subsistence hunter. In 1976
and 1978 the regulations were made more
explicit. Now calves and females accompanied by calves cannot be killed legally, and
any part of a narwhal carcass suitable for
food is to be utilized fully. Hunters are now
required to affix a tag to the carcass or tusk
of any narwhal that is killed. The tags are
issued to settlements on a quota basis and
are intended to limit the harvest. It is illegal
to possess or sell a tusk that is not accompanied by a tag. Because the narwhal is listed
on Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of
Wild Fauna and Flora, tusks exported from
or imported into Canada must be covered by
an export or import permit or are-export
certificate.
The total narwhal quota has remained at
542 since 1981; Pond Inlet and Arctic Bay
are allowed 100 narwhals each, and all other
settlements have quotas of 50 or less. The
reported landed catch of narwhals in Canada
for the period 1975-1984 is given in Table 4.
Dolphins
One diverse group of dolphins, the genus
Lagenorhynchus, has representative species
on both coasts of Canada. When a large
school of dolphins is sighted in inshore or
nearshore waters of British Columbia and
the Maritimes (including Newfoundland and
Labrador), it is likely that they belong to one
of these species or to the species De/phinus
de/phis, the common dolphin. All indulge in
breaching, somersaulting, and other aerial
acrobatics. At times, they will approach the
bow of a vessel under power and swim there
for long periods in its pressure wave. Such
behavior is called bow-riding.
In the temperate and subarctic regions of
the North Atlantic there are two species of
Lagenorhynchus: the whitebeaked dolphin
(L. albirostris) and the Atlantic white-sided
dolphin (L. acutus). They are similar in size
Underwater World
22
Table 4. Reported landed catch of narwhals in Canada, 1975-1984. 1 Quotas are shown
in parentheses for the years when they were first imposed or changed.
Year
1975
1976
1977
1978
Arctic Bay
Broughton Island
Cape Dorset
Chesterfield Inlet
Clyde River
Coral Harbour
Creswell Bay
Frobisher Bay
Gjoa Haven
Grise Fiord
Hall Beach
Igloolik
Lake H arbou r
Pangnirtung
Pelly Bay
Pond Inlet
Rankin Inlet
Repulse Bay
Resolute Bay
Spence Bay
Whale Cove
167
5
0
0
15
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
7
77
0
0
0
0
0
115
6
0
0
15
0
15
0
0
11
0
0
0
10
0
125
0
8
0
0
0
40(100)
10(15)
0(10)
0
35(15)
0(15)
0(12)
0(10)
0(10)
0(20)
13(10)
0(10)
0(10)
1(15)
0(10)
99(100)
0
8(10)
2(20)
0(10)
0
65
26
2
0
4
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
2
0
150
0
4
14
0
0
TOTALS
Quotas
271
n/a
305
n/a
208
(402)
267 331
(402) (417)
Community
1979
1980
1981
33
100
100
49(50) 50
0
1
1
0
0(5)
0
0
9
35(50) 37
0
0(10)
6
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
12
0
0
11
2
17 3
2
36(25)4
120
14
0
0
0
28
19
44(40)
0
0
0
94
96
82
0
5(10)
0
30(25) 25
29
2
0
0
0
0
0
0(5)
0
0
----350
(482)
406
(542)
1982
1983
1984
80
50
0
0
19
0
0
0
0
28
7
25
0
49
0
100
0
21
2
1
1
100
20
0
0
46
0
0
1
22
3
1
18
0
2
0
104
2
11
11
0
0
36
0
0
49
0
0
1
0
2
0
0
0
32
0
45
2
25
0
0
0
383
(542)
----
10 Year
Average
89
25
1
0
26
1
1
1
2
6
5
21
0
19
1
97
1
16
3
0
1
341
285 313
(542) (542)
Official DFO harvest statistics, from D. Goodman, DFO, Ottawa, personal communication.
Includes 108 animals taken from a savssat in Agu Bay.
3 Includes 1 taken from a savssat in Quilliam Bay.
4 Includes 7 taken from a savssat in Quiliiam Bay.
1
2
(maximum length of 2.7-3 m; maximum
weight of over 230 kg) and overall appearance (short, thick beak; tall dorsal fin at
mid-back). At sea, they can be distinguished
by differences in pigmentation. As their
name implies, most whitebeaked dolphins
have a white, or at least light gray, beak.
They also have zones of white to light gray
on the sides, sweeping onto the upper surface of the tail. Atlantic white-sided dolphins
have a vivid white patch on either side and
a broad tan or yellow stripe along either
flank (Figure 23). Both species eat squid, as
well as many kinds of fish.
Although the ranges of the two species
clearly overlap, the white beaked dolphin
occurs in somewhat higher latitudes than the
Atlantic white-sided dolphin. In Newfoundland, whitebeaked dolphins sometimes
become trapped against the coast by winddriven ice. There have been a number of
mass strandings of Atlantic white-sided dolphins on the eastern seaboard in recent years.
The Pacific white-sided dolphin (L. obliquidens) is somewhat smaller than its North
Atlantic relatives. Like them, it has a prominent dorsal fin and a short beak, as well as
a complex pigmentation pattern. A long
white or light gray stripe sweeps along the
back on either side of the dorsal fin, a feature most evident to a shipboard observer as
the animal is bow-riding. In addition to
forming herds of several hundred individ-
uals, the Pacific white-sided dolphin often
associates with other small cetaceans. Large
schools of Pacific white-sided dolphins,
numbering 200-250 animals, are observed in
inshore waters of British Columbia from
October through January. During other
months, smaller groups are more common
inshore.
None of the Lagenorhynchus dolphins has
been exploited on a large scale in Canada.
In the past, when herds of pilot whales were
driven ashore at Newfoundland (and on the
beaches of Cape Cod in the United States),
a few of these dolphins were sometimes
mixed in the catch. On rare occasions, a
hundred or more dolphins were captured in
this way. Indian porpoise hunters in the Bay
of Fundy have occasionally shot white beaked
and Atlantic white-sided dolphins, but their
principal quarry was and stilI is the harbor
porpoise (see beloW).
A few white beaked dolphins and Atlantic
white-sided dolphins that have been iceentrapped or that stranded alive have been
held for short periods in aquariums.
However, of the three Canadian species, only
the Pacific white-sided dolphin has been successfully captured and maintained for long
periods in captivity.
Common dolphins are widely distributed
on the high seas in herds of hundreds or even
several thousand. These handsomely
marked, acrobatic dolphins are abundant
during summer and fall on the Scotian Shelf
and on the continental slope southeast of
Newfoundland. A few strays have been
observed inshore along the coast of Newfoundland. On the west coast, a stranding
at Victoria demonstrated that common dolphins do occur there, at least sporadically.
The striped dolphin (Stenella coeru/eoalba)
is similar in size and appearance to the common dolphin, and it is also found in large
herds, usually well offshore. A number of
striped dolphins have been found freshly
stranded on Sable Island, and skulls of
several have been reported from Vancouver
Island. However, striped dolphins appear to
be quite scarce inshore, except possibly in
association with incursions onto the continental shelf and slope by warm oceanic
currents (Figure 24).
Risso's dolphin (Grampus griseus), sometimes known as the gray grampus, is a rare
visitor to Canadian waters. It is a large dolphin, reaching lengths up to 4 m. Because
of the light gray, almost white appearance
of adults, Risso's dolphins are sometimes
confused with belugas (white whales). However, their tall dorsal fin is in sharp contrast
to the complete lack of such an appendage
on belugas. Risso's dolphins are abundant
in temperate and tropical waters of both the
Atlantic and Pacific. They are only encountered occasionally off the British Columbia,
Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland coasts.
The gregarious northern right whale
dolphin (Lissode/phis borealis) is endemic to
the temperate North Pacific. It is a long,
slender dolphin with no dorsal fin; the lack
of such a fin gave it the vernacular name,
for the right whale also has a smooth back
with no dorsal fin. Although not as commonly seen off British Columbia as in some
areas to the south, northern right whale dolphins range all the way from southern
California to Alaska. They often associate
with Pacific white-sided dolphins and thus
should be looked for whenever a herd of the
latter is encountered.
The bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) is familiar to most Canadians because
of its appearance in captive animal shows
and marine aquariums. However, most
individuals in such displays have been caught
along the southeast coast of the United States
or in the Gulf of Mexico. There is only one
confirmed published record of this species
in the wild in Canada - a female that
strayed into the Petitcodiac River of southern
New Brunswick in September 1950.
Porpoises
Canada's smallest cetaceans are the harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) and
Dall's porpoise (Phocoenoides dalli).
Although related to each other and of simi-
Underwater World
Figure 23. An Atlantic white-sided dolphin caught in mid-air off Cap-des-Rosiers,
Gaspe Peninsula, August 1978. The subequal flank panels of white and
yel/ow-ochre distinguish this species from aI/ others. Photograph by
Maxime St-Amour.
lar body length (maximum of 2.0-2.2 m), the
two species differ in' many important respects. Dall's porpoise is a chunkier, heavier animal than the harbor porpoise; its well
defined, black-and-white markings are in
sharp contrast to the drabber pigmentation
of the harbor porpoise. Moreover, Dall's
porpoise is a high-speed swimmer, known to
dart back and forth across the bow of fastmoving vessels and to make distinctive
splashes of seawater as it charges along the
surface to breathe. The harbor porpoise
usually behaves more cryptically. It does not
bow-ride and usually surfaces with little
splash; thus, in all but the calmest of seas, the
harbor porpoise can be hard to detect.
The distribution of the two species also
differs. Dall's porpoise is found only in the
temperate to subarctic North Pacific. It is a
deepwater animal and usually comes close to
the coast only in areas where canyons or deep
channels provide suitable inshore habitat.
Sightings are especially common in Hecate
Strait, Queen Charlotte Strait, Juan de Fuca
Strait, and exposed seaways like Queen
Charlotte Sound, Dixon Entrance, and Fitzhugh Sound. Dall's porpoises eat squid,
crustaceans, and many kinds of fish. The
harbor porpoise inhabits both the North
Pacific and North Atlantic, where it ranges
regularly into bays and estuaries and over
offshore banks. It eats mainly squid, herring,
mackerel, and other schooling, nonspiny
fishes. Harbor porpoises are especially abundant in the lower Bay of Fundy, where a
team of researchers from the University of
Guelph (Ontario) has been studying details
of their behavior, ecology, and physiology
for more than 10 years.
Boaters in British Columbia sometimes
report sightings of "baby killer whales"
which prove, on closer examination, to have
been Dall's porpoises. The killer whale is certainly found in the same areas as the similarly marked Dall's porpoise and the harbor
porpoise, and it is known to attack both of
them. In the Bay of Fundy and Gulf of
Maine on the east coast, harbor porpoises
are also preyed upon frequently by large
sharks, including the great.. white shark
(Carcharodon carcharias).
Both these porpoises may have a high
23
metabolic rate, which would mean they are
extremely active and require relatively large
amounts of food at frequent intervals.
Several European institutions have successfully maintained, and even trained, harbor
porpoises in captivity, but in North America
attempts to do so have been unsuccessful.
The few Dall's porpoises brought into captivity in California have proven to be highstrung and difficult to keep alive.
Because of their nearshore distribution,
both harbor porpoises and Dall's porpoises
were traditional targets of Indian hunters,
who relished porpoise meat. During the
nineteenth century the Micmac Indians of
western Nova Scotia carried on a commercial porpoise fishery in the Bay of Fundy.
Harbor porpoises were shot with shotguns
and retrieved with long-handled hooks. Their
blubber was rendered down, then sold in barrels at Halifax and Saint John for the soapmaking industry. Local fishermen in the Gulf
of St. Lawrence and in parts of Newfoundland and Labrador still hunt harbor porpoises for domestic consumption, and some
hunting for meat is still done in the Bay of
Fundy by the Passamaquoddy tribe living
in Maine on the shores of Passamaquoddy
Bay. At one time, harbor porpoises were
hunted in the vicinity of Deer Island, New
Brunswick, to supply food for ranch mink.
Harbor porpoises and Dall's porpoises, as
well as other related species of phocoenids
worldwide, face another threat in addition
to natural predators and human hunters:
many die in fishing gear intended to catch
fish rather than porpoises. Each year, a
number of harbor porpoises become trapped
in herring weirs along the coasts of New
Brunswick and Nova Scotia (Figure 25). In
the Gulf of St. Lawrence and along the coast
Figure 24. A striped dolphin on a wharf at Chester, Nova Scotia, 1926. Photograph
courtesy J.C. Medcof.
24
Underwater World
Figure 25. A harbor porpoise trapped in a herring weir in the lower Bay of Fundy,
July 1973. Photograph by DE Gaskin.
of Newfoundland and various parts of the
North American west coa~t, gillnets, cod and
salmon traps, mackerel nets, trawls, and
purse seines take their toll ot: harbor porpoises. The Japanese high-seas gillnet fishery for salmon in the North Pacific kills
several thousand Dall's porpoises annually,
as they become fatally entangled alongside
sea lions, fur seals, seabirds, salmon, and
many other marine organisms, in walls of
netting several km long and about 6 m deep.
A crude estimate of the number of harbor
porpoises present during summer in the
approaches to the Bay of Fundy is 4,000,
with a further 2,000 distributed in coastal
waters of the Scotian Shelf. These porpoises
are probably part of a stock whose winter
range extends south along the U.S. coast to
North Carolina and offshore to Georges
Bank. There are no population estimates for
harbor porpoises on the west coast. The
aggregate population of Dall's porpoise
in the North Pacific is probably close to
a million. However, the degree to which
coastal stocks intermingle with pelagic stocks
is unknown.
Further Reading
Allen, K.R. 1980. Conservation and
Management oj Whales. A Washington
Sea Grant Publication, distributed by
Univ. of Washington Press, Seattle;
Butterworths, London. ix + 107 p.
Brodie, P.F. 1975. "Cetacean Energetics, an
Overview of Intraspecific Size Variation."
Ecology, 56(1): 152-161.
Chapman, J.A. and G.A. Feldhamer (eds.).
1982. Wild Mammals oj North America:
Biology, Management, and Economics.
The Johns Hopkins University Press,
Baltimore and London. xiii + 1147 p.
Davis, R.A., K.J. Finley and W.J. Richardson. 1980. The Present Status and Future
Management oj Arctic Marine Mammals
in Canada. Prepared for: Science Advisory
Board of the Northwest Territories, Yellowknife, N.W.T. Published by: Department of Information, Government of the
Northwest Territories, Yellowknife,
Northwest Territories XIA 2L9. i-viii +
93 p.
Gaskin, D.E. 1982. The Ecology oj Whales
and Dolphins. Heinemann, London and
Exeter, New Hampshire. xii + 459 p.
Haley, D. (ed.). 1978. Marine Mammals oj
eastern North Pacific and Arctic Waters.
Pacific Search Press, Seattle, Washington.
256 p.
Herman, L.M. (ed.). 1980. Cetacean
Behavior: Mechanisms and Functions.
John Wiley & Sons, New York,
Chichester, Brisbane, Toronto. xiii +
463 p.
Hoyt, E. 1981. The Whale Called Killer.
E.P. Dutton, New York. xx + 226 p.
Hoyt, E. 1984. The Whale Watcher's Handbook. Madison Press Books, Toronto,
Ontario. 208 p.
International Whaling Commission. Annual
Reports 1-35, 1950-1985; Special Issues
1-6, 1977-1984. Cambridge, England.
International Whaling Statistics. Ed. by
Committee for Whaling Statistics, Oslo,
Norway. Nos. 1 (1930) to 94 (1984) currently available.
Jones, M.L., S.L. Swartz, and S. Leatherwood (eds.). 1984. The Gray Whale
Eschrichtius robustus. Academic Press,
Orlando, Florida. xxiv + 600 p.
Kanwisher, J.W. and S.H. Ridgway. 1983.
"The Physiological Ecology of Whales
and Porpoises." Scientific American,
248(6): 110-120.
Leatherwood, S. and R.R. Reeves. 1983. The
Sierra Club Handbook oj Whales and
Dolphins. Sierra Club Books, San Francisco. xviii + 302 p.
Lubbock, B. 1937. The Arctic Whalers.
Brown, Son & Ferguson, Glasgow. xi +
483 p.
Mitchell, E.D. 1973. "The Status of the
World's Whales." Nature Canada, 2(4):
9-25.
Mitchell, E. 1975. Porpoise, Dolphin and
Small Whale Fisheries oj the World.
Status and Problems. International Union
for Conservation of Nature and Natural
Resources, Morges, Switzerland. IUCN
Monograph No.3. 129 p.
Mitchell, E. (ed.). 1975. "Review of Biology
and Fisheries for Smaller Cetaceans." J.
Fish. Res. Board Can., 32(7): 889-983.
Payne, R. (ed.). 1983. Communication and
Behavior oj Whales. AAAS Selected Symposium 76. Westview Press, Boulder,
Colorado. xii + 643 p.
Pike, G.C. and LB. MacAskie. 1969. Marine
Mammals oj British Columbia. Fish.
Res. Board. Can., Bulletin 171.
ix + 54 p.
Reeves, R.R. and E. Mitchell. 1984. "Catch
History and Initial Population of White
Whales (Delphinapterus teucas) in the
River and Gulf of St. Lawrence."
Naturaliste can. (Rev. Eco!. SysL),
111:63-121.
Reeves, R., E. Mitchell, A. Mansfield and
M. McLaughlin. 1983. "Distribution and
Migration of the Bowhead Whale, Balaena
mysticetus, in the Eastern North American Arctic." Arctic, 36(1): 5-64.
Rice, D.W. and A.A. Wolman. 1971. The
Life History and Ecology oj the Gray
Whale (Eschrichtius robustus). Amer. Soc.
Mammal. Spec. Pub!. 3. viii + 142 p.
Ross, W.G. 1975. Whaling and Eskimos:
Hudson Bay 1860-1915. National
Museums of Canada, Publications in
Ethnology, No. 10. 164 p.
Underwater World
SchevilI, W.E. (ed.). 1974. The Whale
Problem: A Status Report. Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. x + 419 p.
Sergeant, D.E. 1962. The Biology oj the pilot
or pothead whale Globicephala melaena
(Traitl) in Newjoundland waters. Fish.
Res. Board Can., Bulletin 132. vii + 84 p.
Sergeant, D.E., A. W. Mansfield and B.
Beck. 1970. "Inshore records of Cetacea
for Eastern Canada, 1949-68." 1. Fish.
Res. Board Can., 27(11): 1903-1915.
Slijper, E.J. 1979. Whales. 2nd English edition. Hutchinson of London. 511 p. [Orig.
pub!, in Dutch, 1958]
25
Tomilin, A.G. 1967. Mammals oj the
U.S.S.R. and Adjacent Countries.
Cetacea, Vo!. 9. Trans!. from Russian by
Israel Program for Scientific Translations,
Jerusalem. xxii + 717 p. [Orig. pub!, in
1957]
Tcinnessen, J.N. and A.O. Johnsen. 1982.
The History oj Modern Whaling. Translated from Norwegian by R.I.
Christophersen. C. Hurst & Co., London;
Australian National Univ. Press,
Canberra. xx + 798 p.
Winn, H.E. and B.L. Olla (eds.). 1979.
Behavior oj Marine Animals. Current
Perspectives in Research. Vol. 3: Cetaceans. Plenum Press, New York and
London. xix + 438 p.
Appendix. Scientific and vernacular names of cetaceans of Canada. The preferred French-language usage is indicated by an
asterisk (*).
Scientific
Euba/aena
glacjali~
English 1
European French 2
Right whale
Baleine de Biscaye*
ou Baleine des
Basques
Baleine du
Groenland*
Ba/aena mysticetus
Bowhead whale
Eschrichtius robustus
Gray whale
Ba/aenoptera musculus
Blue whale
Rorqual bleu*
Ba/aenoptera physalus
Ba/aenoptera borealis
Ba/aenoptera
acutorostrata
Fin whale
Sei whale
Minke whale
Megaptera novaeangliae
Humpback whale
Physeter catodon
Sperm whale
Rorqual commun*
Rorqual de Rudolphi*
Rorqual a museau
pointu ou Petit
rorqual*
Megaptere ou
Jubarte
Cachalot*
Kogia breviceps
Kogia simus
Ziphius cavirostris
Pygmy sperm whale
Dwarf sperm whale
Cuvier's beaked whale
Berardius bairdii
Baird's beaked whale
Hypero6don ampullatus
Mesoplodon mirus
Northern bottlenose
whale
Blainville's beaked
whale
Sowerby's beaked
whale
True's beaked whale
Mesoplodon carlhubbsi
Hubbs' beaked whale
Mesoplodon stejnegeri
Stejneger's beaked
whale
Mesop/odon
densirostris
Mesoplodon bidens
Cachalot pygmee*
Ziphius
Hyperoodon boreal *
Mesoplodon de
Blainville
Mesoplodon de
Sowerby
Mesoplodon de True
Mesoplodon de
Hubbs
Mesoplodon de
Stejneger
North American
French 3
Proposed Name
Baleine franche ou
Baleine noire
Baleine boreale ou
Baleine franche du
Groenland
Baleine grise de
Californie
Rorqual bleu* ou
Baleine bleue
Rorqual commun*
Rorqual boreal
Petit rorqual*,
Gibard, ou Rorqual
nain
Rorqual a bosse ou
Baleine a bosse*
Cachalot
macrocephale
Cachalot pygmee *
Baleine a bec de
Cuvier*
Grande baleine a bec
Baleine a bec
commune
Baleine a bec
Blainville*
Baleine a bec
Sowerby*
Baleine a bec
True*
Baleine a bec
Moore
Baleine a bec
Stejneger*
Baleine grise*
Cachalot nain*
Baleine
Baird*
a bec de
Baleine
Hubbs*
a bec de
de
de
de
de
de
Underwater World
26
Appendix (continued).
Scientific
English 1
European French 2
Orcinus orca
Globicephala melaena
Killer whale
Long-finned pilot whale
Orque ou Epaulard*
Globicephale noir
Globicephala
macrorhynchus
Delphinapterus leucas
Short-finned pilot
whale
White whale or Beluga
Globicephale
tropical*
Belouga
Monodon monoceros
Delphinus delphis
Lagenorhynchus
albirostris
Narwhal
Common dolphin
White-beaked dolphin
Narval*
Dauphin commun*
Lagenorhynque a bec
blanc
Lagenorhynchus acutus
Atlantic white-sided
dolphin
Lagenorhynque a
flancs blancs
L.agenorhynchus
obliquidens
Stenella coeruleoalba
Pacific white-sided
dolphin
Striped dolphin
Grampus griseus
Tursiops truncatus
Risso's dolphin or
Grampus
Northern right whale
dolphin
Bottlenose dolphin
Phocoena phocoena
Harbor porpoise
Phocoenoides dalli
Dall's porpoise
Lissodelphis borealis
1
2
3
Dauphin bleu et
blanc
Grampus ou Dauphin
de Risso*
North American
French 3
Epaulard* ou Orque
Globicephale noir;
Globicephale noir de
l'Atlantique
Globicephale du
Pacifique
Beluga* ou Marsouin
blanc
Narval*
Dauphin commun*
Dauphin a nez
blanc*, "Sauteur," ou
"Cochon de mer"
Dauphin a flancs
blancs, "Sauteur" ou
"Cochon de mer"
Dauphin a flancs
blancs du Pacifique*
Dauphin bleu
Globicephale a
nageoires longues*
Baleine blanche*
Dauphin a flancs
blancs de
l'Atlantique*
Dauphin raye*
Dauphin gris
Dauphin ados lisse
Grand dauphin ou
Souffleur
Marsouin
Proposed Name
Dauphin a gros nez
Dauphin ados lisse
boreal*
Tursion*
Marsouin commun*
ou Pourcil
Marsouin de Dall*
Following standard usage adopted by the International Whaling Commission and other agencies.
Following R. Duguy and D. Robineau. 1982. Guide des Mammiferes marins d'Europe.
Delachaux & Niestle, Eds, Neuchatel (Switzerland)-Paris. 200 pp.
Following J. Prescott and P. Richard. 1982. Mammiferes du Quebec et de I'est du Canada.
Editions France-Amerique, Montreal. Vol. 2: XIII + 201-429; E. Mitchell. 1973. Les baleines dans Ie monde.
Nature Canada 2(4); A.W.F. Banfield. 1977. Les Mammiferes du Canada. Deuxieme ed. Publie pour Ie Musee national
des Sciences naturelles Musees nationaux du Canada par Les Presses de l'Universite Laval. xxv + 406 pp. + 46
planches-couleur.
Underwater World
Underwater World factsheets are brief
illustrated accounts of fisheries resources and marine phenomena prepared for public information and education. They describe the life history,
geographic distribution, utilization and
population status of fish, shellfish and
other living marine resources, and/or
the nature, origin and impact of marine
processes and phenomena.
27
Others in this series:
Alewife
American Eel
American Plaice
American Shad
American Smelt
Arctic Char
Arctic Cod
Atlantic Cod
Atlantic Groundfish
Atlantic Halibut
Atlantic Herring
Atlantic Mackerel
Atlantic Pelagic and Diadromous Fish
Atlantic Salmon
Atlantic Shellfish
Atlantic Snow Crab
Bluefin Tuna
Capelin
Cetaceans of Canada
Crabs of the Atlantic Coast of Canada
Dungeness Crab
Grey Seal in Eastern Canada
Haddock
Harbour Seal in Canada
Harp Seal
Hooded Seal
Irish Moss
Lake Trout
Lingcod
Lobster
Lumpfish
Marine Fish Eggs and Larvae
Northern Shrimp
Oyster
Pacific Herring
Pacific Salmon
Pollock
Red Hake
Red Sea Urchin
Red Tides
Redfish (Ocean Perch)
Rockfish
Roundnose Grenadier
Sand Lance
Sea Cucumber
Sea Scallop
Selected Freshwater Fish
Selected Shrimps of British Columbia
Soft-Shell Clam
Spiny Dogfish
Squid
Thorny and Smooth Skates
Trout in Canada's Atlantic Provinces
Turbot (Greenland Halibut)
Walleye
White Hake
Winter Flounder
Witch Flounder
Yellowtail Flounder
Published by:
Communications Directorate
Department of Fisheries & Oceans
Ottawa, Ontario
KIA OE6
DFO/S12
©
UW/S9
Minister of Supply and Services
Canada 1987
Catalogue Number Fs 41-33/59-1987E
ISBN 0-662-15085-6
"Egalement disponibte en fram;:ais sous Ie titre: LES CETACtS
DU CANADA."