page_title: North Pacific right whale
section_title: Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska
hierarchical_section_title: North Pacific right whale / Historic and current distribution / Modern distribution / Summer distribution / Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of a North Pacific Right Whale in the Bering Sea
context_page_description: The North Pacific right whale is a very large, thickset baleen whale species that is extremely rare and endangered.
  The Northeast Pacific population, which summers in the southeastern Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, may have no more than 40 animals. A western population that summers near the Commander Islands, the coast of Kamchatka, along the Kuril Islands and in the Sea of Okhotsk is thought to number in the low hundreds. Before commercial whaling in the North Pacific there were probably over 20,000 right whales in the region. The taking of right whales in commercial whaling has been prohibited by one or more international treaties since 1935. Nevertheless, between 1962 and 1968, illegal Soviet whaling killed at least 529 right whales in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska as well as at least 132 right whales in the Sea Okhotsk. plus an additional 104 North Pacific right whales from unspecified areas.
  The International Union for Conservation of Nature categorizes the species as "Endangered", and categorizes the Northeast Pacific population as "Critically Endangered". The Center for Biological Diversity argues that the North Pacific right whale is the most endangered whale on Earth.
context_section_description: Despite many aircraft and ship-based searches, as well as analysis of listening device records, only a few small areas report recent sightings in the eastern North Pacific. The southeastern Bering Sea produced the most, followed by the Gulf of Alaska, and then California. In 2000, 71 calls were recorded by a deep-water passive acoustic site at 53°N 157°W. An additional 10 were recorded near Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska at 57°N 152°W, another whale which is thought to be a sub-adult animal was observed in Uganik Bay in December 2011, being the first modern record of the species on the western side of Kodiak Island. This was one of the few sightings that has occurred in inshore waters in the area. One right whale was seen resting in Pasagshak Bay in May 2010. Other records along Gulf of Alaska include off Yakutat Bay in 1979, outer bank of Fairweather Ground at 100 km southwest of Cape Fairweather, and so on.
  On August 10, 2004, a group of two were seen in the Bering Sea. Another sighting of 17 including two calves was noted in September, and one in the Gulf of Alaska. In 2005, 12 right whales were seen in October just north of Unimak Pass.
  In August 2015, NOAA Fisheries conducted a three-week dedicated ship survey for North Pacific right whales in the Gulf of Alaska southeast of Kodiak Island  covering 2,500 nautical miles with both visual observers and acoustic detection devices (sonobuoys). On March 10 and March 16 they heard calls from a single right whale in the area of Barnabas Trough southeast of Kodiak Island in the general area of the designated Critical Habitat. Despite intensive searching, they were unable to spot the animals visually.
  Review of more than 3,600 North Pacific right whale calls detected by passive listening devices between 2000 and 2006 strongly suggests that the whales migrate into the southeast Bering Sea in late spring and remain until late fall. The earliest were in late May and the latest in December. The peak calling period was July through October. Most were detected from shallow shelf sites within the designated Critical Habitat area. From October through December 2005, several calls were detected at the northwestern middle-shelf and the deeper shelf sites, suggesting that they may appear at different seasons and during migration.
  A proposed oil and gas lease of North Aleutian Basin in the SE Bering Sea caused the Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the Department of the Interior to fund at an annual cost of about $1 million a cooperative series of annual surveys with the National Marine Fisheries Service and the North Pacific Research Board (NPRB), with a focus on located right whales and gathering further information about them.
  An Argos PTT satellite transmitter was deployed in one and the whale was monitored for 58 days, a period in which it remained in a relatively small area within the middle shelf of the Eastern Bering Sea, just to the north of the North Aleutian Basin.
  A right whale was observed between Alaska Peninsula and Kilokak Rocks in July, 2017 which makes it the first confirmation of the species in the vicinity in the past half century.
caption: North Pacific right whale in the Bering Sea, summer 2004, photo by Bob Pitman, NOAA
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