• DOI:10.1134/S1062359013090100
• Corpus ID: 18169458

Observation of the gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) in the Laptev Sea

@article{Shpak2013ObservationOT,
  title={Observation of the gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) in the Laptev Sea},
  author={Olga Shpak and Daria M. Kuznetsova and V. V. Rozhnov},
  journal={Biology Bulletin},
  year={2013},
  volume={40},
  pages={797-800}
}

• O. Shpak, D. M. Kuznetsova, V. Rozhnov
• Published 7 December 2013
• Geology, Environmental Science
• Biology Bulletin

797 The gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus, Lilljeborg, 1861) as an Arctic species with seasonal migration may serve an indicator for climate changes in the Arctic (Moore and Huntington, 2008). The gray whale ear lier inhabited the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and the adjacent northern seas; however, by the beginning of the 18th century, this species had been extirpated in the Atlantic (Mead and Mitchell, 1984). In the Pacific Ocean, two gray whale populations are recognized (LeDuc et al., 2002): Okhotsk–Korean and Chukotka– Californian. The Okhotsk–Korean population spends summer in the Sea of Okhotsk, while the Chukotka– Californian population summer feeding grounds lie mainly in the Arctic between 174° E and 130° W in the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort seas; there are records of the gray whales visiting the East Siberian Sea (Rice, 1998). In the summer months of the years with poor ice conditions, individual gray whales were sighted near the mouth of the Kolyma River (Bogoslovskaya, 2002) and even more westward, “on the approach to the New Siberian Islands” (Matishov et al., 2000), namely, according to the map scheme in the publica tion, between 153° E and 158° E. In the fall, the Chukotka–Californian population migrates south ward, crosses the Pacific Ocean, and descends along the North American coast to California and Mexico to their reproduction area; and in the spring these whales again cross the ocean to return to the north, to the coasts of Kamchatka and Chukotka (Swartz et al., 2006).