Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaengliae)

Humpback whales occur in all the world's oceans and were severely depleted by commercial whaling during the early 1900s. In the North Pacific alone, more than 28,000 whales were killed during that period. One analysis suggests that 15,000 humpback whales inhabited the North Pacific Ocean before commercial whaling began. By the mid-1960s their numbers may have been reduced to as few as 1,000 whales. These populations are thought to exist in the North Pacific with breeding grounds located in Hawaii, coastal waters off Mexico, Central America, and the Ryukyu and Bonin Islands south of Japan. The combined abundance of these populations likely numbers between 4,000 and 5,000 today. In the North Atlantic, a single population numbering in excess of 10,000 whales migrates between calving grounds in the northern and western Caribbean and feeding grounds off New England, Canada, Greenland, and Northwest Europe. Following a similar measure adopted for the North Atlantic humpback whales in 1955, the International Whaling Commission prohibited the taking of humpback whales in the North Pacific Ocean in 1966, and the ban has remained in place since then.

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