Abstract
By the end of the 19th century, European whalers had brought the bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) in the “Spitsbergen stock” ranging the waters between eastern Greenland and the western Russian Arctic to the verge of extinction. This paper presents observations of this species in Northeast Greenland and in the Greenland Sea between 1940 and 2004. The number of observations has increased in Northeast Greenland since the mid-1980s. Only three observations are known for the period 1940–1979 but during the 1980s, the 1990s and between 2000 and 2004, six, six and eight observations of bowhead whales were made, involving an absolute minimum of three, five and eight to ten different individuals, respectively. It remains uncertain whether this represents an increase in survey effort, an immigration from other areas, a recent recovery of an eastern Greenland relict “tribe” belonging to the Spitsbergen stock, or a combination of these factors.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Christian Hjort, Andrew Witham, Sebastian Rasmussen, Arild Andresen, Mike and Kate Lea, Clive Johnson, Wilfried Jokat, Claus Andreasen, H. Rasmusén and Jonas Brønlund for sharing with us their unpublished observations of bowhead whales. We also thank the Sirius Sledge Patrols, Air Iceland and the Danish Polar Center for their logistic support in the field. During this study, OG was supported by grants from the French Polar Institute (IPEV) and the Academy of Finland while EWB was supported by grants from the Danish National Science Foundation (SNF) and the Scientific Commission for Research in Greenland. We thank Jonathan Carl (Greenland Institute of Natural Resources) for correcting our English. Two anonymous reviewers provided useful comments on the manuscript.
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Gilg, O., Born, E.W. Recent sightings of the bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) in Northeast Greenland and the Greenland Sea. Polar Biol 28, 796–801 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-005-0001-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-005-0001-9