Morpho-physiological description of gray whales landed in the North Pacific in XX century

Abstract

Biostatistical data are presented for 1300 gray whales belonged to the California-Chukotka population (East Pacific gray whales) and landed in the waters of Far East of Russia in 1980-2000s and for 148 gray whales belonged to the Korea-Okhotsk population (West Pacific gray whales) and landed in the early 19th century at Korean Peninsula. In the eastern population, the portion of females changed by areas and years in the range 43-60 % (on average 13.4 % of them were pregnant), length of whales was 8.6-14.1 m, their age was 1.5-60.0 years old, with the portion of juveniles from 20 to 90 %, and fatness was very variable, without any tendency. These parameters are significantly different from those ones for the whales landed at Korea, where males prevailed and the animals were generally larger.

Keywords

• gray whale
• whaling
• harvest
• sex-age structure
• size structure
• fatness
• physiological conditions
• chukotka peninsula
• korean peninsula