Eubalaena japonica

Eubalaena japonica (Lacépède, 1818) —North Pacific Right Whale

Balaena japonica Lacépède, 1818 p.469; Type locality- Japan; True, 1884 p.591.

B. antarcitca antarcitca: Temminck & Schlegel in Siebold, 1844 p.18.

B. sieboldii Gray, 1864 p.349; Type locality- coast of Japan and northwest coast of North America.

B. australis: Aoki, 1913 p.333.

B. glacialis sieboldii: Kuroda, 1938 p.9.

Eubalaena glacialis: Kim et al., 2000 p.64; Kim, 2004 p.215.

Range: In the North Pacific, right whales occur during the summer in the Sea of Okhotsk, the southeastern Bering Sea, the Aleutian Islands, and the northern Gulf of Alaska (Shirihai & Jarrett 2006). During the winter, they occur (at least, historically) southward to the East Sea (Brownell et al. 2001). In 1911 and the 1960s, fishermen caught two individuals in the waters of Korea (Park 1987). No record existed after 1974 (Park 1987), until February 2015, when one whale became tangled in a net of a mussel farm in Namhae, on the southern coast. This migratory whale usually occurs in the East Sea between April and May (Fig. 74).

Remarks: North Pacific and North Atlantic right whales were initially considered a single species, E. glacialis (Müller 1776), whereas, the southern right whale, E. australis was subsumed as a separate species (National Marine Fisheries Service 2013). Whale biologists divided the Northern and Southern Hemisphere forms based on skeletal and genetic data (Schaeff et al. 1997; Churchill et al. 2012). Rosenbaum et al. (2000) compiled a database of mtDNA samples from right whales in the North Atlantic Ocean, North Pacific Ocean, and Southern Hemisphere and concluded that three right whale species had genetic validity. Gaines et al. (2005) and Kaliszewska et al. (2005) subsequently confirmed the three species of right whales by analyses of nuclear DNA and the genetics of whale lice, respectively. In 2008, the National Marine Fisheries Service listed the North Pacific right whale as a separate species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) based on these genetic studies.

Conservation status: The South Korean government made E. glacialis (currently, E. japonica) a Protected Marine Species in 2007. CITES lists the species on Appendix I. It is listed on the IUCN Red List as ‘Endangered’. Based on our information, North Korea is not involved in the conservation of this whale.