. 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. Whales California Channel Right whales, Eubalaena glacialis (Borowski, 1781), are the most endangered of the world's whales. A prime quarry of yankee whalers everywhere, right whales were hunted relentlessly in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the North Pacific, such hunt- ing was most intense
. 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. Whales California Channel Right whales, Eubalaena glacialis (Borowski, 1781), are the most endangered of the world's whales. A prime quarry of yankee whalers everywhere, right whales were hunted relentlessly in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the North Pacific, such hunt- ing was most intense in the Bering Sea, north temperate North Pacific and Gulf of Alaska, but, as Scammon reported, some right whales were taken "from February to April as far south as Bahia Sebastian Vizcaino and near Cedros Island". We have located further unpublished records, from 19th century whaling logs, which document sightings and chases of right whales east of Guadalupe Island in April of 1856. Collectively these few records demonstrate that before the populations were se- verely depleted by whaling, right whales once occurred from at least as far south as central Baja California north to Arctic waters. A few were encountered and killed by shore whalers operating from San Diego Bay in the ye rs 1850-1870. Other sightings and cathes in the eastern North Pacific, xa plotted by Maury, Townsend and others, were mostly in the Gulf of Alaska and northern North Pacific, tending to be progressively farther seaward as one moves south of most important whaling grounds. Movements of right whales between summer and winter grounds, including those off Baja California, presumably placed some right whales, at least seasonally, in or near the SCB and CINMS. By some accounts, right whales may never have been very abundant in the northeastern Pacific. According to Scammon, by 1874 they were already considered rare and sightings and takes were exceptional. Nevertheless, whalers, operating from yan
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