North Pacific Right Whale

The North Pacific right whale (''Eubalaena japonica'') is a very large, thickset baleen whale species that is extremely rare and endangered.

The Northeast Pacific population, which summers in the southeastern Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, may have no more than 40 animals. A western population that summers near the Commander Islands, the coast of Kamchatka, along the Kuril Islands and in the Sea of Okhotsk is thought to number in the low hundreds. Before commercial whaling in the North Pacific (i.e. pre-1835) there were probably over 20,000 right whales in the region. The taking of right whales in commercial whaling has been prohibited by one or more international treaties since 1935. Nevertheless, between 1962 and 1968, illegal Soviet whaling killed at least 529 right whales in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska as well as at least 132 right whales in the Sea of Okhotsk, plus an additional 104 North Pacific right whales from unspecified areas.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature categorizes the species as "Endangered", and categorizes the Northeast Pacific population as "Critically Endangered". The Center for Biological Diversity argues that the North Pacific right whale is the most endangered whale on Earth.

Taxonomy

Since 2000, scientists have considered the right whales in the North Pacific and nearby seas to be a separate species, ''Eubalaena japonica'', the North Pacific right whale. Genetic differences between ''E. japonica'' and ''E. australis'' are much smaller than other baleen whales represent among different ocean basins.

Before 2000, right whales in the North Pacific were considered conspecific with right whales in the North Atlantic and Southern Hemisphere and all described as ''Eubalaena glacialis'' in the scientific literature. All these animals resemble each other in outward appearance very closely. The differences that separate them into separate species are genetic and discussed in the article on Balaenidae. The recognition of the different populations of ''Eubalaena'' whales as distinct species is supported by the Society for Marine Mammalogy, the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, and the International Whaling Commission.

The North Pacific, North Atlantic and Southern right whales are all members of the family Balaenidae. The bowhead whale found in the Arctic is also a balaenid whale, but sufficiently different to warrant its own genus ''Balaena''.

The cladogram is a tool for visualizing and comparing the evolutionary relationships between taxa. The point where a node branches off is analogous to an evolutionary branching – the diagram can be read left-to-right, much like a timeline. The following cladogram of the family Balaenidae serves to illustrate the current scientific consensus as to the relationships between the North Pacific right whale and the other members of its family.

Description

''E. japonica'' is a very large, thickset baleen whale. It very closely resembles the North Atlantic right whale (''E. glacialis'') the southern right whale (''E. australis''), so much so they were long thought to be just one species. Indeed, without knowing which ocean an individual came from, the physical similarities are so extensive that individuals can only be identified to species by genetic analysis. Relative to the other right whale species, ''E. japonica'' may be slightly larger. Like other baleen whales, female North Pacific right whales are larger than males. Also, North Pacific brindle-colored individuals are less common than they are among southern right whales.

''E. japonica'' is easily distinguished from other North Pacific whale species by several fieldmarks: lack of dorsal fin or bump, very broad, black back, cyamid-covered callosities on the head and lips, a very arched jaw line, a very narrow rostrum, and often a V-shaped spout. North Pacific right whales can reach in length as adults, larger than the North Atlantic right whale. Typical body mass is from ,Burnie D and Wilson DE (Eds.), ''Animal: The Definitive Visual Guide to the World's Wildlife''. DK Adult (2005), or to which weighs twice as of typical humpback whales. There is one record of a whale captured during illegal Soviet operations, while reliability of larger measurements of with and 2 cases of http://www.icrwhale.org/pdf/SC0131-52.pdf one each from eastern and western pacific sides are uncertain. They are much larger than gray or humpback whales and also being very stout, particularly when compared to the other large baleen whales such as blue and fin whales. For 10 North Pacific right whales taken in the 1960s, their girth in front of the flippers was 0.73 of the total length of the whale. There have been claims that pectoral fins of pacific right whale are larger in portion than the other right whales and more pointed, and there may exist shape differences of tail by individuals or sex. Additionally, differences of coloration and shape (minor) of baleen plates between pacific and Atlantic have been noted.

Right whales are also unique in that they all have callosities—roughened patches of epidermis covered with thousands of small light-colored cyamids. The callosities appear in patches on its head immediately behind the blowholes, along the rostrum to the tip, which often has a large callosity, referred to by whalers as the "bonnet". The functional purpose of the callosities has not been determined.

The closely related bowhead whale differs from the right whale by lacking any callosities, having a more arched jaw and longer baleen. The seasonal ranges of the two species do not overlap. The bowhead whale is found at the edge of the pack ice in more Arctic waters in the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea, and occurs in the Bering Sea only during winter. The bowhead whale is not found in the North Pacific.

Although more than 15,000 right whales were killed by whalers in the North Pacific, there are remarkably few detailed descriptions of these whales. Most of our information about the anatomy and morphology of ''E. japonica'' comes from 13 whales killed by Japanese whalers in the 1960s and 10 whales killed by Russian whalers in the 1950s. Basic information about right whale lengths and sex are also available from coastal whaling operations in the early part of the 20th century.

Ecology and behavior

Feeding

Like right whales in other oceans, North Pacific right whales feed primarily on copepods, mainly the species ''Calanus marshallae''.
They also have been reported off Japan and in the Gulf of Alaska, feeding on copepods of the genus '' Neocalanus'' with a small quantity of euphausiid larvae, '' Euphausia pacifica''.

Like other right whale species, the North Pacific right whale feeds by skimming water continuously while swimming, in contrast to balaenopterid whales such as the blue and humpback whales which engulf prey in rapid lunges. Right whales do not have pleated throats. Instead they have very large heads and mouths that allows them to swim with their mouths open, the water with the copepods flowing in, then flowing sideways through the right whale's very long, very fine baleen trapping the copepods, and then out over their large lower lips.

It takes millions of the tiny copepods to provide the energy a right whale needs. Thus, right whales must find copepods at very high concentrations, greater than 3,000 per cubic meter to feed efficiently. National Marine Fisheries Service researchers mapped the southeast Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska for areas with sufficient productivity to support such concentrations and analyzed the roles of bathymetry and various gyres in concentrating copepods to such densities.

Behavior

There have been very few, short visual observations of right whale behavior in the North Pacific. The mid-19th century whaling onslaught occurred before there was much scientific interest in whale behavior, and included no scientific observation. By the time scientific interest in this species developed, very few whales remained and nowhere in the eastern North Pacific or Bering Sea could observers reliably find them. Based on limited observations in the 19th century, it was noted that the more extensively whaling was conducted, the more aggressive and harder to approach the whales became. These traits correspond with some of recent observations in which whales seemed to be very sensitive to vessels and easily swim away with by submerging longer to avoid ships enough for onlookers and observers to lose sights. Pre-World War I whaling logs from Japan also describe right whales as being among the most sensitive of targeted baleen or toothed species to the impacts of whaling, as they immediately fled from locations where whaling took place, possibly abandoning their habitat for good.

As of 2006, scientists had minimal success satellite tagging North Pacific right whales. Observations total probably less than 50 hours over the last 50 years. What little is known about North Pacific right whale behavior suggests that it is similar to the behavior of right whales in other oceans, except in its choice of wintering grounds. The individual which was observed during a whale-watching tour off the Kii Peninsula, Japan breached six times in a row in 2006. The same whale watching operator had two sightings in 2006 and again had a very close encounter with a right whale in 2011. This animal was very curious and active; it swam around the vessel for more than 2 hours, breaching, spyhopping, tail-slapping, and pec-slapping close to the boat. The ship had to cruise away from the whale because it kept following them. Another curious and playful individual was encountered during a whale-watching trip off Bonin Islands in March 2014.橋本弦. 2014
絶滅危惧種のセミクジラ、小笠原諸島で１８年ぶり確認
The Asahi Shimbun. Retrieved December 23, 2015

Like the other ''Eubalaena'' species, North Pacific right whales are known to interact with other cetacean species. Several observations of North Pacific right whales to interact with groups or solitary humpback whales have been recorded in both Eastern and Western North Pacific. A record of a pair of gray whales were seen showing signs of aggression towards a right whale and chasing it off California, 1998,Records of North Pacific Right Whales along the coasts of California, Baja, Oregon and Washington
. Jim Scarff's Eclectic Home Page. Retrieved January 14, 2013. while a sub-adult right whale was seen swimming in a group of critically endangered Western gray whales with social behaviors demonstrated in inshore water ( Piltun Bay region) of Sakhalin's northeast coast in 2012.Shipulin 201
А давайте я вам китов покажу, а?
. LiveJournal. Retrieved June 9, 2014

Vocalizations

Right whales in the Southern Hemisphere and the North Atlantic make a variety of vocalizations that have been researched extensively in the last decade. Because the numbers of right whales in the North Pacific are so small, and the whales are located in more remote areas, the study of North Pacific right whale vocalizations has had more challenges and there are fewer recordings. All of the sounds recorded for North Pacific right whales have been recorded on the northern portion of their range—in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska. It is unknown whether they made additional or different vocalization on their wintering grounds or on the western part of their range. From these relatively few samples it appears that right whales in the North Pacific make calls similar to those of other right whale species (''Eubalaena'' spp.), although the calls may differ in some details and in the relatively frequency of usage of different calls.

These calls are all low frequency sounds that appear to have social communication functions, but what exactly those functions are is not yet known. There is no evidence that right whales' sounds are used for echolocation as is seen in dolphins and toothed whales.

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Between 2000 and 2006 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA researchers deployed passive acoustic listening devices in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska and recorded at least 3,600 North Pacific right whale calls . Nearly all of these calls came from the shallow shelf waters at approximately of the southeastern Bering Sea in what is now designated Critical Habitat for this species. 80% were frequency-modulated "up-calls" at an average 90–150 Hz and 0.7 second duration. "Down-up" calls constituted about 5% of the calls, and swept down for 10–20 Hz before becoming a typical "up-call". Other call types, ''e.g.'' downsweeps and constant-tonal "moans" constituted less than 10% of total calls. The calls were clumped temporally—apparently involving some level of social interaction, as has been found in the calls of right whales in other oceans. The calls came more at night than during the day.

The upcalls of right whales are sufficiently distinct from the calls of other whale species that they can be used to identify the presence of right whales in the area by the calls alone, if care is taken in the review of those calls. Humpback whales also occur in much of the range of the North Pacific right whale, including in the Bering Sea, and parts of the highly variable and complex humpback calls can be similar to right whale calls, similar enough that confirmation that a call is in fact from a right whale usually requires a human to review the entire context of the call rather than simply relying on an algorithm to identify the call as is possible for other species.

Right whales in other oceans have been recorded making a percussive vocalization labeled a "gunshot call" or gunshot. The role and purpose of this call is uncertain. However, until 2017, it had never been proven than it was right whales in the North Pacific that were the whales making this type of call, so detection of gunshots was not considered a reliable indicator of the presence of right whales.

Until recently it was thought that the most common call used by North Pacific right whales was the "upcall". This call is relatively stereotypic among all right whale individuals and populations. The next most common call has been labeled the "downcall" and this is also fairly stereotypic. Right whales also make a variety of other frequency-variable calls of different durations. However, these are so varied, they have not been categorized by researchers.

Until recently it was not proven that North Pacific right whales made a percussive call made by right whales in other oceans called a
"gunshot"—that sounds like a shotgun being fired. Gunshot calls appear to be made by males and may be associated with some aspect of mating. Here is
link to audio recordings of these types of calls
from a North Atlantic right whale.

In 2017, sophisticated and painstaking research by NOAA scientist Jessica L. Crance and other NOAA scientists was able to definitively attribute gunshots to North Pacific right whales, and found that among the animals sampled gunshots were heard ~50 times more frequently than upcalls. Because gunshots to be used much more and are less likely to be mistaken for a humpback call, this should improve the detectability of right whales in the North Pacific using passive acoustic monitoring, and improve the ability to locate individual whales from ships as well.

Habitat preferences

Right whales' habitat preferences vary depending on the time of year. In spring, summer and fall, the right whales are seeking concentrations of food. In winter, in the North Atlantic and Southern Hemisphere, pregnant females and their calves generally seek out shallow, protected bays in which to give birth and raise their calves. In the North Pacific, the pattern of right whales seeking out areas of high food is the same, but female right whales and calves in the North Pacific do not show the clear pattern of concentrating in nearshore aggregations. The distribution of North Pacific right whales in winter remains a major mystery.

Since there are so few right whales to observe in the North Pacific, and they are generally feeding far from shore, alternative analyses of habitat preferences are required. Gregr used maps of historic whaling catches and added oceanographic data from other sources to identify preferred habitats. His analysis suggest that on the scale of ocean basins, North Pacific right whales seek out regions of cold water with low inter-annual variability and high within-season variability (i.e. areas where high frontal activity occurred predictably from year to year). However, and a more localized regional scale these correlations weakened.

In winter, North Pacific right whales can occur from the Bering Sea as far south as the Bonin Islands. It is the whales that go south that are frequently seen close to shore. Right whales have historically been found closer to shore in very shallow waters than other large baleen whales, but they are by no means limited to near-shore habitats. There is a record of a female North Atlantic right whale giving birth 63 km off the shores of Jacksonville, Florida.

Many of the very near shore sightings of North Pacific right whales have occurred in Russia, Japan, and South Korea.Kim, H.W., K.J. Park, H. Sohn, Y.-R. An, D.-H. An, 2015, Entanglement of North Pacific right whale (''Eubalaena japonica'') off Korean waters., SC/66a/HIM/15., Report to the International Whaling Commission Scientific Committee Annual Meeting, San Diego, California. They have been seen to enter into ports, staying just next to piers or wharfs, and there have been regular records of whales being entangled in set nets along Japanese and South Korean coasts in recent years.

There has been a record of rather aggressive interspecies interactions between a right whale and a pod of grey whales off California, making it the only record of possible interspecies aggression among baleen whales, but there have been an observation of social behaviors between the two species on Sakhalin. Furthermore, there is no decent population of grey whales existing outside of North Pacific as of 2014, therefore extents of interspecies competitions, if they've ever happened, or peaceful habitat sharing between these coastal species, before whaling, are unknown. A theory of humpback whales to invade and become a dominant species over Hawaiian islands, former wintering ground for right whales, in the past few centuries, corresponding with the timing of right whale hunts across the Pacific Ocean, had been claimed as well.

Summering congregations were known to occur among various areas based on whaling records. Following locations were with larger numbers of catch records: Korf in Olyutorsky,Японский кит / ''Eubalaena japonica''
Zoosite.com.ua. Retrieved on 2016-01-20. and Kambalny Bay. Of these, at least Kambalny Bay still hosts several whales at times; 5 whales were observed from shores in December, 2012.

Historic and current population

Historic population

Before the arrival of the pelagic whaling fleet after 1835 into the range of the North Pacific right whale, the whale's population size, at least in the eastern part of its range, was probably at its original population size—in the range of 20,000–30,000 whales. The part of the whale population in the west around Japan may have been reduced from its original size as a result of the historic net whaling.

There was essentially no aboriginal hunting for right whales along the west coast of North America by Native Americans in the 19th century or before. There was a small hunt for whales in the Aleutian Island by Aleuts but this was almost certainly so small that it did not reduce the original whale population size. Accordingly, one can consider 1835 as a good year to use as a baseline for the historic population, at least in the eastern North Pacific, and the northern parts of the western North Pacific.

There were no attempts to objectively estimate the population in the 1800s, so deriving a population estimate from the number of animals caught in the whale fishery is the only way attempted to date to determine the historic population size. In the single decade of 1840–49, between 21,000 and 30,000 right whales were killed in the North Pacific, Sea of Okhotsk and Bering Sea. To support this level of take by whalers in a decade, the population of this slow reproducing species of Okhotsk and nearby waters would have had to be in the range of 20,000–30,000 animals at a minimum. For comparison, a population of 20,000 or more animals is comparable to the current and presumably early 19th century population of Gray whales in the North Pacific

On the west side of the North Pacific, the situation was different because the Japanese had a tradition of hunting right whales from shore in Japan with the use of nets which had started centuries before the arrival of American whalers. In Japanese shore-based net whaling, right whales were the prime target, and the whale fisheries were devastating to the stocks as catch quantities declined greatly in relatively short periods, and the effect of the industries were more notable on the whale populations than the later American whaling,末田智樹, 2009, 近世日本における捕鯨漁場の地域的集中の形成過程-西海捕鯨業地域の特殊性の分析-, 岡山大学経済学会雑誌40(4). Retrieved November 30, 2014 resulting not only in financial solvencies of many whaling groups but also in disputes between feudal domains in western Japan that required the shogunate itself to settle."〔長崎県大村市の地域密着サイト　トラコンNAVI.com〕"
. trakomnavi.com. Among this, it has been revealed that Japanese people have been trying to shift responsibility of whale declines to the later American whalers to control public opinions since at the end of the Edo period.熊野太地浦捕鯨史編纂委員会, 1990, 「鯨に挑む町―熊野の太地」. Retrieved November 30, 2014

Current population

The current population of North Pacific right whales is estimated at approximately 30–35 whales in the eastern North Pacific and 300+ whales in the western portion of its range. Even if one considers the combined population size estimate of both apparent stocks of this species, this is the smallest known population of any whale species aside from the North Atlantic right whale (est. 200-250), and probably only 2 percent of its population in 1835 when pelagic whaling first reached the North Pacific. Accordingly, the species is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List and the eastern population is categorized as Extremely Endangered.

The International Whaling Commission and the United States National Marine Fisheries Service consider North Pacific right whales found in these two areas to exist as two somewhat discrete populations and manage them as separate stocks. The extent of independence of these two apparent populations of whales both geographically and genetically is very poorly understood due to lack of data, but discussing them separately is convenient for describing recent sightings and population estimates.

Bering Sea and North East Pacific

Most recent sightings and acoustic records of right whales in the eastern part of their range have come from a relatively small area in the southeastern Bering Sea. Most of these records are within, or near, the U.S. designated Critical Habitat for the North Pacific Right whale. A much smaller number of sightings has come from the Gulf of Alaska and the coasts of British Columbia and further south. The very small number of North Pacific right whale calls detected during the NMFS acoustic research—hundreds per year contrast with the vastly greater number (hundreds of thousands) of bowhead whale calls during migration in the western Arctic and blue whale calls off California—further reinforces the conclusion that the population size of North Pacific right whales in the Bering Sea is very small.

A 2015 review of the status of all the baleen whales concluded that genetic and photo-ID mark-recapture analyses each suggest there are only about 30 animals left in the eastern subpopulation, mainly observed in the southeastern Bering Sea and with a male bias to the population. The 2015 reviewers had found no new information that increased the population estimate above that made in 2010 when National Marine Fisheries Service scientists estimated that the population of North Pacific right whales that summer in the southeastern Bering Sea was about 30 animals.

Prior estimates of larger current right whale population numbers in the eastern North Pacific were highly speculative. A comprehensive review of sighting data and population estimates in 2001 concluded that "none of the published estimates of abundance relating to North Pacific right whales can be regarded as reliable ... ostestimates appear to be little more than conjecture ... ndno quantitative data exist to confirm any of these estimates."National Marine Fisheries Service: Review of the Status of the Right Whales in the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans (2006)
(PDF). Retrieved September 15, 2011.

The 2010 article was the first to present an objective quantitative rationale for its low estimates. The scientists' mark-recapture photographic studies suggested a population of 31 whales (95% confidence level = 23–54); and their genotyping study suggested a population of 28 whales (95% confidence level = 24–42). The scientists estimated the population contains eight females (95% confidence level = 7–18) and 20 males (95% confidence level = 17–37). They concluded that "Although these estimates may relate to a Bering Sea subpopulation, other data suggest that the total eastern North Pacific population is unlikely to be much larger. In 2004, at least two calves were seen.

In the Gulf of Alaska, there have been opportunistic sightings (1998, 2004) and acoustic records (2000) of individual right whales near Kodiak Island.

Additionally, there have been two sightings of individual right whales off British Columbia in 2013. A third sighting was recorded in 2018.

Sea of Okhotsk and Western North Pacific

The 2015 review of whale status concluded that there are more right whales in the western North Pacific than in the eastern region, but even estimates of that population still places it among the world's smallest populations of marine mammal.

In the west, most recent sightings of right whales occur along the Kamchatka Peninsula, in the Kurile Islands, in the Sea of Okhotsk, and the Commander Islands, along the coasts of Japan. A map of this area includes Russian territorial waters (12 miles from shore), Russian Exclusive Economic Zone out to 200 miles from shore, Japanese territorial and EEZ waters, and some international waters, even in the center of the Sea of Okhotsk. As a result, surveys for whales and fisheries have generally not been able to comprehensively survey the region, particularly close to shore, as has been possible to do in the eastern North Pacific.

= The Sea of Okhotsk

=

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, observers on Japanese research vessels reported 28 sightings of right whales in the Sea of Okhotsk. From this sample, the Japanese scientists estimated a population of 900 right whales in the Sea of Okhotsk, albeit with wide confidence intervals (90% CI = 400–2,100). Data obtained during Japanese sighting surveys for minke whales in 1989, 1990, and 1992 led Japanese scientists to estimate a population of 922 right whales in the Sea of Okhotsk (95% CI: 404–2,108) (Miyashita and Kato 1998, IWC 2001:26). However, the reviewers who prepared the IUCN Red List documentation concluded that given the very wide confidence intervals surrounding the Japanese estimate and the lack of clear evidence of any recent increase in numbers, the lower end of the range of that abundance estimate (i.e., about 400) should be used for assessment (Reilly et al. 2008k). Other scientists also wrote that the Japanese estimate was based on faulty methodology and the population was likely to be only half as large or smaller.

After a gap of 14 years, Japanese researchers were able to resurvey this area in 2005 and apparently saw similar numbers of right whales in the same area.

= Kuril Islands

=
A team of ''National Geographic'' and tourism companies encountered three whales at Paramushir and Shumshu, succeeded in swimming and taken underwater images, and aerial footage using a drone in 2017.

= Japan

=
More recently, surveys for large whales in offshore waters east of Hokkaido (Japan) and the Kuril Islands from 1994 to 2013 resulted in 55 sightings of right whales (77 individuals) including ten female/calf pairs (Matsuoka et al. 2014).

= Kamchatka

=
There were 19 sightings of 31 whales in the Russian EEZ (mainly around the northern Kuril Islands, the southern Kamchatka Peninsula and the Commander Islands) between 2003 and 2014 A 2015 review of sightings of right whales seen in Russian waters between 2003 and 2014.

Another 10 sightings of right whales in five groups were reported in 2012 surveys southeast of the Kamchatka Peninsula and off the Kuril Islands (Sekiguchi et al. 2014) and(Ovsyanikova et al. 2015). The 2015 reviewers concluded that all data collected since 1992 in the western North Pacific, especially the Sea of Okhotsk, need to be analyzed for a new abundance estimate so that an assessment can be completed for this subpopulation.

Historic and current distribution

Historic distribution

Before 1840, the range of the North Pacific right whale was extensive and had probably remained the same for at least hundreds of years. It could be found from the Sea of Okhotsk in the west to the coast of Canada.

Our knowledge of the historic distribution of this whale comes almost entirely from the logbooks of the pelagic whalers (and the records of the shore-based whaling in Japan.) The first such effort were a series of charts known subsequently as the Maury "Whale Charts".

In the late 1830s, the U.S. Navy sought wind and current information for areas of the oceans outside the trade routes regularly traveled by merchant ships. The principal mariners who ventured away from the main trade routes were whalers. One of the U.S.'s first oceanographers, Naval Captain Matthew Fontaine Maury, entered into an agreement with deal with the American pelagic whalers. If they provided him with their logbooks, from which he could extract wind and current information, he would in return prepare maps for them showing where whales were most concentrated. Between 1840 and 1843, Maury and his staff processed over 2,000 whaling logbooks and produced not only the famous Wind and Current Charts used by mariners for over a century, but also a series of Whale Charts. The most detailed showed by month and 5° of latitude and longitude: (a) the number of days on which whaling ships were in that sector; (b) the number of days on which they saw right whales; and (c) the number of days on which the saw sperm whales. In the North Pacific, these charts summarize more than 8,000 days on which the whalers encountered right whales and the searching effort by month and sector. The maps thus provide a crude measure of the relative abundance of right whales by geographic sector and month, controlled for the very non-random searching effort of the whalers.

In 1935, Charles Townsend from the New York Zoological Society (now the Wildlife Conservation Society) reviewed an overlapping set 2,000 whaling logbooks and mapped the locations of whale taken by species. His Chart C shows catch locations around the world, including the location by month of most of the 2,118 right whales taken in the North Pacific between 1839 and 1909, using data copied from 249 logbooks. His charts do not adjust for the nonrandom distribution of whalers. Chart C shows three main concentrations of right whales—one in the Gulf of Alaska; one along Kamchatka and the Sea of Okhotsk; and another in the Sea of Japan.

Maury's detailed whale charts in this series languished largely forgotten in a few libraries until the 1980s. when they began to be studied more rigorously. The Maury charts have an advantage over the Townsend chart in that the number of whales seen/killed in a given area could be adjusted for the amount of searching effort that had occurred, giving a more accurate indication of the species abundance in that area in that month. The Maury charts also quantify the searching effort by region and month, whereas in the Townsend charts searching effort is dealt with only qualitatively.

North Pacific whalers hunted mainly in the summer, and that is reflected in the Maury Whale Charts. There were almost no winter sightings and very few south of 20°N. The densest concentrations occurred along both coasts of Kamchatka and in the Gulf of Alaska.

These initial studies of the historic records were reviewed more rigorously and combined with more recent information in 2004.

The Maury charts were based on tables transcribed by two assistants. More recent examination of the logbooks directly revealed that one of the assistants made numerous errors in the transcription of the logbooks.

Recently, the data from the data sheets behind the Maury and Townsend charts and other logbook data has been combined rigorously to provide the best maps yet of distribution of North Pacific right whales in the 19th century.

Of particular interest are the questions of how many "stocks" of right whales exist in the North Pacific. Was there just a single population across the North Pacific? Was there an eastern population that summered in the Gulf of Alaska and a second population in the western North Pacific? Was the population in the Sea of Okhotsk a third population distinct from the whales found in the Pacific east of Kamchatka?

Recently, researchers reanalyzed this early whaling data, along with more recent, but much sparser, sighting data. They conclude that there are probably at least two stocks of right whales in the western and eastern North Pacific, but that it is still unclear whether the Okhotsk population is a separate stock.
Though the North Pacific right whale's distribution is usually more temperate than that of the more polar Bowhead whale, there are several records of the two species inhabiting the northeastern Sea of Okhotsk at the same time. ''E. japonica'' summer distribution extends north into the southeastern part of the Bering Sea. In summer, the Bowhead migrates north through the Bering Straits and is in the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea. In winter, the ice-loving Bowhead moves south into the Bering Sea, but the right whales have migrated further south of the Aleutian Islands into the North Pacific.

Catch records suggest that historical ranges were much broader than that of current status, and was strongly overlapping with ranges of bowhead whales. In Bering Sea, feeding/summering grounds could have reached further north up to the Kusilvak Census Area such as at Kokechik and Scammon Bays in east, north of St. Matthew Island and Nunivak Island to south of the St. Lawrence Island in the central, in Litke Strait and the Karaginsky Island and Karaginsky Gulf in the west.

Modern distribution

Summer distribution

= Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska

=

Despite many aircraft and ship-based searches,
as well as analysis of listening device records, only a few small areas report recent sightings in the eastern North Pacific. The southeastern Bering Sea produced the most, followed by the Gulf of Alaska, and then California. In 2000, 71 calls were recorded by a deep-water passive acoustic site at . An additional 10 were recorded near Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska at , another whale which is thought to be a sub-adult animal was observed in Uganik Bay in December 2011, being the first modern record of the species on the western side of Kodiak Island. This was one of the few sightings that has occurred in inshore waters in the area. One right whale was seen resting in Pasagshak Bay in May 2010.The North Pacific Right Whale (''Eubalaena japonica'')- the most endangered whale
Jim Scarff's Eclectic Home Page. Other records along Gulf of Alaska include off Yakutat Bay in 1979, outer bank of Fairweather Ground at 100 km southwest of Cape Fairweather, and so on.

On August 10, 2004, a group of two were seen in the Bering Sea. Another sighting of 17 including two calves was noted in September, and one in the Gulf of Alaska. In 2005, 12 right whales were seen in October just north of Unimak Pass.

In August 2015, NOAA Fisheries conducted a three-week dedicated ship survey for North Pacific right whales in the Gulf of Alaska southeast of Kodiak Islan

covering 2,500 nautical miles with both visual observers and acoustic detection devices (sonobuoys). On March 10 and March 16 they heard calls from a single right whale in the area of Barnabas Trough southeast of Kodiak Island in the general area of the designated Critical Habitat. Despite intensive searching, they were unable to spot the animals visually.

Review of more than 3,600 North Pacific right whale calls detected by passive listening devices between 2000 and 2006 strongly suggests that the whales migrate into the southeast Bering Sea in late spring and remain until late fall. The earliest were in late May and the latest in December. The peak calling period was July through October. Most were detected from shallow shelf sites within the designated Critical Habitat area. From October through December 2005, several calls were detected at the northwestern middle-shelf and the deeper shelf sites, suggesting that they may appear at different seasons and during migration.

A proposed oil and gas lease of North Aleutian Basin in the SE Bering Sea caused the Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the Department of the Interior to fund at an annual cost of about $1 million a cooperative series of annual surveys with the National Marine Fisheries Service and the North Pacific Research Board (NPRB), with a focus on located right whales and gathering further information about them.

An Argos PTT satellite transmitter was deployed in one and the whale was monitored for 58 days, a period in which it remained in a relatively small area within the middle shelf of the Eastern Bering Sea, just to the north of the North Aleutian Basin.

A right whale was observed between Alaska Peninsula and Kilokak Rocks in July, 2017 which makes it the first confirmation of the species in the vicinity in the past half century.

= Northwestern Pacific

=

There are very few reports of right whales in the western North Pacific. A remnant population of right whales persists in the Sea of Okhotsk at least in the summer, along with remnant populations of the western populations of gray and bowhead whales.

The distribution of these three species is quite different. In summer bowheads inhabit the Shantar Sea, northwestern corner of the Sea of Okhotsk around Academy and Ulban Bays to the Shantar Islands, while gray whales stay close to Sakhalin Island, near massive new energy developments. In contrast, the right whales inhabit the southern Sea of Okhotsk around the Kuril Islands and east of Sakhalin Island. Some recent sighting records are available.

Recent occurrences of right whales near the Kuril islands are largely unknown due to lack of observation effort; however, recent sightings indicate that the areas adjacent to Paramushir Island and surrounding, and west of the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula are seemingly one of the most populated locations for this species today.

Even though the eastern coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula is considered as a feeding ground for right whales, only a few records exist from the eastern side including sightings in 1978 and in 2009.

Right whales were historically hunted in the Commander Islands heavily where only a handful of sightings are made in recent years, however, encounters with this species around the Commander Islands and off eastern Kamchatka seems to occur on a more regular basis compared to the last several decades.Belonovich O. A., Mamaev E. G., Fomin S. V., Konovalova L. I. (2012
"Cetaceans off the northern cape of Bering Island, Commander I."
p. 93 in ''Marine Mammals of The Holarctic''. Collection of Scientific Papers. Marine Mammal COUNCIL.

This area's remoteness makes observation very difficult and expensive. Based on survey records from "JARPN" and "JARPN II" conducted by Institute of Cetacean Research, the 40 right whales seen were distributed mainly in offshore waters from 1994 to 2007.

Pelagic whalers in the 19th century hunted large numbers of right whales along the coasts of Kamchatka and in the Sea of Okhotsk. The latter area is a large sea, ice covered most of the year, entirely in Russian waters. Due to Russian restrictions on access, little was known about whales in this sea. Soviet scientists indicated that historically two groups of right whales existed within western North Pacific that migrate along different side of Japanese Archipelago and each group had unique characteristics in distribution patterns due to geographical factors; the Okhotsk group which was distributed in more coastal waters with higher densities of congregations, and the Pacific group which have been distributed on far broader ranges and more was more oceanic (offshore). Of these, the Okhotsk group were regarded to be wiped out much earlier than the Pacific group because of geographical and distribution characteristics that eased whalers to hunt the targets, and this indication corresponds with the extreme rarity or virtual extinction of right whales in Sea of Japan or East China and South China Sea today.

Survey records from "JARPN" and "JARPN II" conducted from 1994 to 2007 by the Institute of Cetacean Research detected 28 groups of right whales totaling 40 individuals with 6 cow-calf pairs distributed mainly in offshore waters.SC/J09/JR35 Matsuoka, Koji; Kiwada, Hiroshi; Fujise, Yoshihiro and Miyashita, Tomio
Distribution of blue (''Balaenoptera musculus''), fin (''B. physalus''), humpback (''Megaptera novaeangliae'') and north pacific right (''Eubalaena japonica'') whales in the western North Pacific based on JARPN and JARPNII sighting surveys (1994 to 2007)
iwcoffice.org

In summer 2009, a co-operative cetacean sighting survey was conducted in the Sea of Okhotsk by the Japanese National Research Institute of Far Seas Fisheries and the Russian (VNIRO) institute.遠洋 リサーチ＆トピックス　Vol. 7, March 2010
Google. Retrieved October 30, 2011. During this survey, 17 groups of 29 right whales were recorded and photographed. Analysis of the photographs revealed no matches among the individuals resulting in a minimum record of 29 whales encountered during the survey.

Besides offshore waters, three major hot spots for right whales where with good increases in sighting numbers have been confirmed in coastal Russian waters have been detected: the Commander Islands, the First Kurilskiy Strait (between Cape Lopatka and Paramushir Island), and the east coast of Sakhalin including Piltun Bay, the only congregating area known for endangered western gray whales.

Pelagic waters off southeastern Kamchatka Peninsula is the location possibly with the highest sighting frequency in recent years even though this area is far offshore and it is unclear where these whales migrate southward.

Migration

Past thinking about North Pacific right whale migration presumed a paradigm of migratory behavior similar to that of other baleen whales in the North Pacific. Perhaps the extreme example of North Pacific whale migration is that of Gray whale. Nearly all the Gray whales that summer in the Bering Sea migrate to wintering grounds off Baja California. In summer and winter, nearly all the gray whales are either at the northern or southern ends of their range. Initially scientists assumed that North Pacific right whales had similar migratory pattern.

Analysis of 19th century pelagic whaling suggest that North Pacific right whales do migrate south in winter, but the whaling data did not indicate any specific migratory routes as seen in gray whales. The 19th century whalers travelled north in spring and south in fall. To some extent the apparent North Pacific right whale migration shown in the whaling data is an artifact of bias in the whaling effort.

More recent studies of right whales in North Atlantic and the North Pacific suggest a migratory pattern that is quite different than the gray whale example. In the North Atlantic, many right whales remain in the northern part of their range throughout winter. It appears that while some right whales migrate far south to warmer waters, a substantial percentage of the population either does not migrate as far south or may not migrate at all.

The collection of acoustic records of North Pacific right whales has revealed that portions of the North Pacific right whale population remains in the Bering Sea at least as late as December and as early as January. The acoustic research done in the Unimak Pass has shown right whales passing through this pass.

No coastal or other wintering ground has been found for North Pacific right whales. Which factors cause right whales not to favor inshore waters is unknown. Off the west coast of the United States, Point Conception is a turning location in terms of sighting records in the 19th and 20th centuries, and this may contribute to support the once-abandoned idea; existence of historical breeding grounds in coastal waters including along North American continent."Records of North Pacific Right Whales along the Coasts of California, Baja, Oregon and Washington"
sfcelticmusic.com. Ryukyu Islands had been suggested as a wintering ground for the western population, but little evidence supports this. According to Maury's chart, in winter, some concentrations could be seen at several areas such as the southern Sea of Japan, around southern coasts of Korean Peninsula (such as around today's Dadohaehaesang National Park on southwestern Korean Peninsula) and Jeju Island, areas off Shanghai and the Zhoushan archipelago, Taiwan Strait (e.g. Fujian coasts like Pingtan Island, Penghu Islands, west coast of Taiwan), the northwestern Hawaiian Islands. (with smaller areas scattered among southern Korean and Japanese waters). In Asia, southernmost of areas with higher catch densities were the pelagic waters between continental China (latitudes equal to Shanghai and Zhoushan Islands) and west of Kyushu in south to southern coasts of Korean Peninsula during the summer. Some whales were caught off Hainan Island and this area is possibly the southernmost location of known range for the western population. The whales are also known to occur around the northern Mariana Islands. A map had been academically created which forecasts potential wintering habitats for right whales in north Pacific according to environmental factors corresponding to that of north Atlantic species, including further south to Hainan, Leizhou Peninsula, and northern Gulf of Tonkin. Historical occurrences of vagrancy around Borneo have been considered as well,Beasley I., Jefferson A.T., 1997
Marine Mammals of Borneo: A preliminary checklist
, pp. 193 – 214 while possibilities of migrations to or through Philippines are unclear.

The population (s) historically migrated through the Sea of Japan to the Yellow and Bohai Seas was likely driven to functional extinction. No right whales have been recorded in China and in South Korea since the catches in October 1974 for Korea and 1977 for China, and there have been only two confirmed records of a stranded and a by-caught individuals since in 1901 in Japanese waters of the Sea of Japan.

Constant appearances in both sides of Pacific were recorded until 1998 and all the southernmost records at four locations of almost same latitude were made in both sides around 1996–97; Amami Ōshima, Bonin Islands, Hawaii, Cabo San Lucas. Last records off west coast were in 1998 off Cape San Martin and Monterey. Afterwards, any records ceased until 2014. In Bonin Islands and off Oregon and California, constant occurrences were confirmed in the 1990s. What factors caused sudden rise in sighting trends in the 2010s and disappearance in the 2000s in many of former range especially for mid-lower latitudes are unknown. The Bonin Islands are the only location where sighting interval of constance was confirmed and succeed underwater filming in modern times. Off Japan, sudden rises in number were confirmed in 2003, 2006, 2008, and in 2011 where an exceptionally large number was recorded in 2011; at least 3 or more sightings, 1 entanglement, 1 stranding of 18 m animal. Fragments of a lower jaw, measuring 4.6 m in length and likely to be artificially sliced off, was discovered on a beach in Akkeshi in June 2014.

Western North Pacific

= Japan

=

The occurrence of North Pacific right whales in Japanese waters appears to show several patterns. Historic and modern sightings appear to occur more frequently in three areas: (1) the north, particularly north of Hokkaido, (2) along the coasts of central Japan, and (3) among Japan's southern islands, particularly the Bonin Islands.

The waters around and north of Hokkaido historically where regions where 19th century pelagic whalers hunted for right whales during summer and fall. This region and north through the Kuril Islands, the southern Sea of Okhotsk and Kamchatka were feeding grounds for the right whales. Some of the recent sightings of right whales off Japan are consistent with this pattern.

Right whales were formerly abundant off the coast of northeastern Japan where there have been a few sightings in recent years including observations from ICR research surveys (single animals confirmed off Kushiro, Hokkaido, in September 2002 and off the Pacific coast of Honshu in April 2003). Local fishermen have regularly seen a few animals per year in the area (personal contact). There is one unconfirmed sighting off the Shiretoko Peninsula in 2008.

A breaching right whale was observed during a sightseeing cruise off the Shiretoko Peninsula in July 2013 making it the first confirmed sighting in the area for several decades and the first recorded in Hokkaido.Archived a
Ghostarchive
and th
Wayback Machine
A right whale, most likely the same individual, was seen in the area for the following two weeks until a pod of local killer whales came back to Shari coasts. The observer noted many of local tour-operating boats cruising at high speeds did not seem to detect the whale resting on water surface and forced the right whale to submerge quickly to avoid collisions. In 2018 and 2019, additional sightings have been made from the west coast of the peninsula. 2018 sighting and one of two sightings in 2019 have been made by the same tour operator, Doutou Kanko Kaihatsu (Corporation) ( :jp:道東観光開発).

The occurrence of right whales along the coasts of central Japan appears to reflect the migration of right whales past these points. There are some locations along the Pacific side of Honshu where sightings are particularly more common; from south of Tokyo Bay to all around the Izu Peninsula, from the Izu Islands to the Bonin Islands, the Kii Peninsula, Cape Muroto and adjacent waters. In the first area, there was one entanglement freed alive in April 2000 off Tateyama, and two strandings at Izu Ōshima in 2002 and 2005.

Some right whales still migrate south along Japan's coasts particularly the Pacific side of the archipelago, but what portion of the southward migration passes Japan is unknown.

The occurrence of right whales among the southern Japanese islands suggest that a wintering ground may occur around there.

An right whale was entangled off Kamogawa coast in May, but escaped while another carcass was seen floating off Cape Nozaki. A right whale of was sighted on January 28, 2014, making it the first record in the East China Sea in the 21st century. One whale about the same size entered the port of Ushibuka, Kumamoto on March 28, 2014.

In addition, possibly two different animals were seen off Bonin Islands on 12th and 25th March 2014. Later one was larger, and was curious towards whale-watching vessels. The whale was observed interacting with a Humpback whale. Izu and Bonin Islands are regions with highest confirmed sightings and strandings rates among tropical regions in the past century. In 1993, Yasuhiro Morita of Ogasawara Diving Center succeeded in encountering right whales on four occasions near the Bonin Islands.

Most of recent sightings have occurred along the Japanese coast. Historically, right whales may have wintered in the East China Sea from the Ryukyu Islands to south of China including Taiwan though there is little scientific evidence supporting this idea. Modern sightings in the East and South China Seas, or Yellow and Bohai Seas are very rare, and the number of records is small. Only a few confirmed sightings in the area have occurred, and all the 5 records in the East China Sea in the last 110 years were recorded only on Amami Ōshima island and with Sukomobanare Island.Oki K. (2014)
1/29 セミクジラ再発見ならず・・・
Retrieved October 19. 2014
Svrsh2.kahaku.go.jp. Retrieved October 30, 2011. Additionally, all of the modern records of right whales on mainland coasts of China were concentrated on the island of Haiyang in northern Yellow Sea.

Right whales may have wintered in the Bonin Islands, but few sightings in recent decades support this idea. The Ogasawara Whale-watching Association reported seeing 3 groups of 4 different right whales in the Bonin Islands in the 1990s (two animals from different groups were photographed and recorded on underwater video); A pair of possible right whales were seen migrating south outside the port of Aogashima in December 2007. Another group of 2 or 3 animals appeared just off Mikura island in March 2008. One animal was sighted very close to shore in Niijima, 2011 (later described). A small right whale was seen nearby Manazuru Peninsula on April 3, and one or two right whales were sighted off Miyake Island on April 21, 2016.

Off the Kii peninsula, there was one sighting in June 1999, one mortal entanglement in April 2003, and three records of two animals in the spring-summer 2006 (both from many whale watching vessels). One of these whales was very active. A right whale escaped alive from a fishing net near Taiji Town in January 2009, a very close observation during whale watching tour (later described) in April 2011. An individual was sighted off Kushimoto within a pod of rough-toothed dolphins in February, 2016. Off Cape Muroto, two entanglements (both escaped safely) were reported in February 1971 and February 2008. Two adults stranded in the northern and southern Ibaraki Prefecture in 2003 and 2009.

Modern sightings in the Japan Sea are very seldom made. Some strandings were reported from the 1970s to late 2000s, but none of the possible sightings of right whales were published or confirmed. Whaling of right whales continued until 1978 in the Sea of Japan. A photo of a Right whale being hunted in 1922 in the Sea of Japan is available.

Unusually high numbers of right whales were recorded off Japan from February to mid-April 2011. One mature female of body length was stranded on the Shimoda coast on the southern Izu Peninsula. Carcass of this individual was not covered by barnacles. It had been previously sighted off Inatori, and another animal was sighted very close to shore off Inatori again. A photo and a video are available. Another possible right whale was observed just outside a port in Manaduru in May (no photo was taken).

In the Izu Islands, one whale was observed very close to shore, tail-slapping for an extended period of time.くじら – 林檎が一番 – 楽天ブログ（Blog）
Plaza.rakuten.co.jp. Retrieved October 30, 2011.新島島暮らし: 2011年03月 アーカイブ
Niijima.jp. Retrieved October 30, 2011. No photo of its head was taken.

Off Kii Peninsula, in April 2011, the same whale-watching operator who had encountered two right whales in 2006 had a very close encounter with a right whale. This whale was very curious and active; it swam around a vessel for more than 2 hours, displayed all the aerial actions several times (breaching, spyhopping, tail-slapping, pec-slapping) alongside the vessel, and the vessel had to cruise away from the whale because it kept following the vessel. Many professional whale photographers were on this tour, some of them were also on the board when this tour operator during the 2006 sightings.

Some whale watching or touring companies have encountered with several right whales or on several occasions such as several companies associated with Ogasawara Whale Watching Association (four animals in the 1990s), Nanki Marine Leisure Service (three animals in 2006 and 2011), Mikura Island Tourism Association (two whales in 2008), Godzilla-rock cruise (''Gojira-iwa kankō'') and its subsidiary, Shiretoko Fox Cruise since the 2000s (more than three times at least), Heritage Expeditions (at least three whales in the 2010s).

A young right whale was killed when it entangled itself in a net off Ōita Prefecture in March 2011.海棲哺乳類情報データベース» アーカイブ » 大分県佐伯市でセミクジラ混獲
Svrsh1.kahaku.go.jp. Retrieved October 30, 2011. In fact, this was reported by a biologist who saw a right whale's meat being sold at a local market, later reported to a local aquarium.

A sailor on a yacht had a very close encounter with a cow-calf pair breaching off Miura Peninsula in the earlier 2000s. This sighting was later confirmed by a local marine biologist working at an aquarium.No.5 相模湾の生き物のこと
Aburatsubo.com. Retrieved October 30, 2011.

Wintering/calving grounds

No coastal or other wintering ground has been found for North Pacific right whales. Which factors cause right whales not to favor inshore waters is unknown.

Most recent sightings of ''E. japonica'' occurred near the coasts; however, as of 2014, none of studies to detect the wintering/calving grounds for ''E. japonica'' have been successful though there is an ongoing project by North Pacific Research Board to locate those areas with a hypothetical situation that ''E. japonica'' historically preferred coastal waters along east coasts of North American continent.

Reviewing of other ''Eubalaena'' species' biology, as the population of ''E. australis'' in New Zealand primarily use subantarctic Auckland and Campbell Islands as wintering/calving grounds, and the majority of non-calving adults of ''E. glacialis'' winter in pelagic waters of Bay of Fundy with recent records of new-born calves present in the region. These areas are known to be feasible for feeding/summering; hence, it is possible that it is not always necessarily for right whales in North Pacific to migrate to warmer waters for wintering/calving, and historical wintering ranges could have been much broader than previously considered. Large portions of southern rights also wintered in pelagic waters in the past, from sub-polar to nearby Equator regions.Carroll L. E. (2011)
Return of the Right Whale: Assessment of Abundance, Population Structure and Gene Flow in the New Zealand Southern Right Whale
University of Auckland. Retrieved November 7. 2014

In winter, the whales' distribution is particularly mysterious. There have been a few sightings close to shores in California and even Baja, particularly in the 1990s along locations like La Jolla, Point Sur, Big Sur coasts, Piedras Blancas, San Simeon, Point Montara, and in Santa Barbara Channel. They have been rare, of short duration and none since 1998. Largest numbers of whales sighted at one times in eastern Pacific outside of SE Bering Sea since after the late 20th century were of 8 animals off Destruction Island in 1959, sightings off Cape Flattery of 3 whales in and 1967 and 6 or 7 whales in 1973, 4 whales at the mouth of Yakutat Bay in March 1979, a pod of 2 or 3 whales at Three Arch Rocks in Oregon in 1994, and likely a pair seen off southwest of San Miguel Island in February 2015. In the western Pacific, the latest of recent records were of a close encounter by a yachter with a cow-calf pair off Sajima Island in Sagami Bay in the early 2000s and a pod appeared close to the pier on Mikura Island in 2008.

Eastern North Pacific

Off the west coast of the United States, Point Conception is a turning location in terms of sighting records in the 19th and 20th centuries, and this may contribute to support the once-abandoned idea; existence of historical breeding grounds in coastal waters including along North American continent.

Until recently, most researchers thought that right whales in the eastern North Pacific wintered off the west coast of North America, particularly along the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California. There have been few winter sightings in all these areas, particularly in California. A more detailed study argues that these single individuals were merely stragglers. Notwithstanding 7 days/week whale-watching operations in several parts of this range, there have been only 17 sightings between Baja and Washington state. The absence of calves from historic California stranding data suggests that this area was never an important calving or wintering ground. When a right whale was observed along the coast of La Jolla in 2017, the animal was initially misidentified as a gray whale.

Western North Pacific

Modern observation of right whales in southern Japan and in Izu and Bonin Islands, and in Amami Ōshima, didn't show any signs of whales spending long periods there (although being relaxed, resorting activities have been confirmed) and mostly whales left in a few days, thus where these individuals spent most time in those winters are largely unclear. Only record of longer staying was of Shiretoko sighting in 2013 as possibly the same individual stayed along western coasts of the peninsula for two weeks, and this case was in summer. It is unclear whether the two sightings from the same area on June 25 and July 19, 2019 belong to the same individual (see above).

There are remote (hence less pressures from impacts of human activities) and unstudied areas still possessing less – damaged environments where right whales were historically distributed, scattering among North Pacific and adjacent waters. These include northern proportions of Sea of Japan within Russian, North Korean, and Japanese EEZ such as along Primorsky Krai like Rudnaya Bay and Peter the Great Bay, northern Korean Peninsula and adjacent islands such as at East Korea Bay, Ulleungdo, Oki Islands, pacific islands, atolls, seamounts, and guyot

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