Title: Cetaceans of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary / prepared for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary and NOAA, National Marine Fisheries Service by Stephen Leatherwood, Brent S. Stewart, Pieter A. Folkens
Identifier: cetaceansofchan00leat (find matches)
Year: 1987 (1980s)
Authors: Leatherwood, Stephen; Stewart, Brent Scott; Folkens, Pieter A; Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary (Agency : U. S. ); United States. National Marine Fisheries Service
Subjects: Whales California Channel Islands.
Publisher: Santa Barbara, Calif. : The Sanctuary
Contributing Library: Penn State University
Digitizing Sponsor: LYRASIS Members and Sloan Foundation

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Minke Whale Bakencptera acutorostrata Lacepede, 1804 Although the minke whale has a world-wide distribution, because of its small size it was not actively hunted by commercial whalers in most areas until the reduction in populations of larger, more valuable, species (such as right, bowhead, blue, fin and sei whales) required a shift in whaling focus. In the North Pacific, minke whales were killed, historically, in very small numbers by natives ol the Pacific Northwest of North America, especially those at Cape Flattery, Washington. Minke whales began to be exploited in the coastal waters of Japan several centuries ago. Whalers used the traditional multiple boat driving and killing methods employed for the larger species. The Norwegian method of whaling using small catcher boats, introduced to Japan in about 1890, was used to take minke whales, but they were not the primary species pursued and did not, until recently, become the object of a focused fishery in Japanese waters. Following the introduction of modern catcher boats in Japan in the 1920s, the coastal fishery there expanded. Russian pelagic whaling fleets began taking minke whales in 1933 off the east coast of Kamchatka, in the Bering Sea and in the Arctic Ocean. Japanese pelagic vessels began exploiting minke whales in the Northwest Pacific in 1930. The annual catch in this last fishery increased slightly through the early 1950s, after which it stabilized at about 400 whales. The Republic of Korea has used small shore-based catcher boats to harvest whales reported as minkes year-round in the waters off Korea since the late nineteenth century. The catch in that area increased gradually from 170 in 1962 to 396 in 1969; 715 were taken in 1970; between 1971 and 1980 the annual catch fluctuated between 500 and a maximum of 1,033. Between 1954 and 1982 at least 22,746 minkes were killed by Japanese and Korean whalers in the Northwest Pacific.
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FIGURE 19. Minke whales, the sharp-headed finner of whaling literature and the smallest of the rorqual whales, are reportedly relatively common in the SCB. (Photo off Dana Point, April 1981, by B. S. Stewart.) 16

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