Bowhead Whale

The Species
The largest Yukon animal by far, the bowhead whale can reach a length of 20 metres and a weight of 50 tonnes.

Its huge mouth contains about 700 bristly baleen plates which act as a strainer, collecting plankton and other small organisms from the water and bottom sediments.

This black whale with a white chin migrates between its wintering area in the Bering Sea and its summer feeding area in the Beaufort Sea off the Yukon coast.

The Problem
Commercial whalers exploited Beaufort Sea bowheads for blubber and baleen from 1848 to 1914.

How low the numbers dropped is unknown but today, 80 years after the end of commercial whaling, the Beaufort population is estimated to be about one-quarter of its original size.

Despite its slow recovery, the Beaufort population is the largest stock of bowheads in existence.

What is Being Done
The bowhead whale has been protected from commercial harvest since 1935.

Today, the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans works jointly with Alaska in monitoring the Beaufort Sea bowheads during their annual migration across the north coast of Alaska and Yukon.

The policy of "hands-off and watch carefully" seems to be working because bowhead numbers have been rebuilding slowly.

The aboriginal subsistence harvest of bowheads in Alaska, Yukon and NWT continues at a low level.

The subsistence harvest in the Yukon is limited to one adult bowhead each year.

It is important to remember that the bowhead whale became endangered as a result of the intense commercial harvest, not the low-level traditional harvest.