Spitsbergen Bowhead Stock:A Short Review

RANDALL R. REEVES

Introduction

The bowhead whale, Balaena mys­licelus, had a nearly circumpolar dis­tribution, historically, in the higherlatitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.Five geographically separate stocks arerecognized by the International 'vYhal­ing Commission (IWC)(l978), pnmar­ily on the basis of argu~ents presentedat its 1977 annual meeting In an unpub­lished report l

. These stocks are: I) TheSpitsbergen stock, estimated at 25,000in 1679' 2) the Davis Strait stock, esti­mated 'at 6,000 before commercialexploitation; 3) the Hudson Bay stoc.k,estimated at 700 prior to commercialhunting; 4) the Bering Sea stock, esti­mated at 18,000 in 1850; and 5) the Seaof Okhotsk stock, estimated at 6,500before commercial exploitation (allfrom IWC, 1978).

The purpose of this paper is to sum­marize briefly the history of exploita­tion, the historical distribution, and thecurrent status of the Spitsbergen stock.It is based on a review of literature.

Aboriginal Exploitation

This, the largest bowhead whalepopulation, was the first to beexposedto European commercial hunting. Theextent to which the Spitsbergen stockwas hunted by aboriginal peoples is dif­ficult to determine. Vibe's (1967) ac­count of the development and move­ment of Eskimo cultures in Greenland,from which the following discussion isderived, indicates thatthe first immigra­tion to north Greenland occurred in ap­proximately 2500-2000 B.C. Both theIndependence people, who were musk­ox hunters, and the Sarqaq people, who

I Mitchell, E. D. 1977. Initial population size ofbowhead whale (Ba/aena mysricelUs) stocks:cumulative catch estimates. UnpubL manuscr.submitted to IWC Scientific Committee, Can­berra, Australia, June 1977, as SC/29/Doc. 33.

Sept.-Oct. 1980

were reindeer hunters, inhabited northGreenland off and on until about 500B.C. The Dorset people, reindeer hunt­ers came about 100 B.C. and disap­pe;red around 500 A.D. I know of noevidence that any of these peoplehunted whales, and almost certainlythey did not hunt them off northeasternGreenland, where animals from theSpitsbergen stock would have beeninvolved.

The Whaling (or Thule) Culture wasestablished in northwestern Greenlandbetween 900 and 1200 A.D. Some ofthese people immigrated to northeast­ern Greenland at least as early as 1480,when a skin boat carrying Eskimowhale hunters arrived from the north­west at Pearyland (Knuth, 1967).Whalebone and baleen lashings wererecovered in an archaeological site atPearyland, and the latter were radiO­carbon dated as 470±100 years old.Perhaps it was in the 15th century, then,that the Spitsbergen stock of bowheadsfirst experienced the sting of pnmttlvewhaling weapons off northeasternGreenland. In the 15th and 16th cen­turies the Angmagssalik Eskimos (In­ugsuk) of southeastern Greenlandprobably pushed northward, eventuallymeeting and merging with the Thulepeople to create what Vibe called the"Northeast Greenland Mixed Culture,"which seems to have depended heavilyon reindeer. That this culture exploitedbowhead whales is suggested by thediscovery of whale bones in a middensearched by Scoresby (1823) andanother examined by Vibe (1967).

European whalers in the Greenl~nd

Sea reported several instances In whIchcaptured whales had stone h.arpoo.nheads or lance tips imbedded In theircarcasses (Gray, 1935). Unaware of the

Randall R. Reeves is Research Collaborator, Na­tional Fish and Wildlife Laboratory. SmithsonianInstitution, Washington. DC 20560.

existence of Eskimos in northeasternGreenland, they interpreted such findsas evidence that bowheads immigratedinto this area from Davis Strait or theChukchi Sea. However, subsequent ar­chaeological discoveries have demon­strated beyond reasonable doubt thatthese implements were fashioned andwielded by local Eskimos. Graysuggested that the dec! ine an? eventualextinction of this Stone Age clvlltzattonafter 1823 may have been due, at least inpart, to the drastic reduction in thebowhead whale population caused bycommercial whaling. By 1870 theNortheast Greenland Mixed Cultureappears to have vanished utterly (Gray,1935), and the modern, rejuvenated set­tlement at Scoresbysund was not estab­lished until 1925 (Vibe, 1967).

Available information is too sparse tojudge whether the early aboriginal in­habitants of northeastern Greenlandhad a significant impact on theSpitsbergen bowhead stock .. However,the marginal nature of subSistence Itfein this unforgiving land suggests thatEskimo habitation was sporadic, andwhat whaling that did occur was proba­bly local in impact and primitive inmethodology. Eskimo residents ofScoresbysund are not known ever tohave taken up the pursuit of largewhales, although they do kill narwhals,Monodon monoceros, and whItewhales, Delphinaplerus leucas , occa­sionally (Kapel, 1977), and they relyheavily on seals for subsistence (Kapel,1975).

Tomilin (1957) referred to whalehunting along the Murman coast ofRussia as early as the 9th century, butdid not indicate, except by inference,that bowheads were among theexploited species. He did assert, withunfortunately little documentatIOn, thathunters from the northern coasts ofRussia sailed to Spitsbergen long beforethe island's "discovery" by Barents in1596, to hunt whales, presumably in­cluding bowheads, and pinnipeds.

Commercial Exploitation,Whale Distribution,and Stock Identity

The history of the intensive Europeanfishery that flourished around Spits­bergen and off east Greenland between1610 and 1910 has been reviewed by

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many authors (e.g., Scoresby, 1820;Eschricht and Reinhardt, 1866; South­well, 1898; Jenkins, 1921; Lubbock,1937; Tomilin, 1957; and Jong, 1978).Though tens of thousands of whaleswere captured in those areas during thisperiod, major questions about theSpitsbergen stock remain unresolved.

For instance, Scoresby (1820) ob­served that identifiable substocks, whathe called "tribes," of whales occupieddifferent grounds in summer and mi­grated southward in the fall by differentroutes. He mentioned differences inhead shape and body proportions that,by his estimation, could havetaxonomic significance. Eschricht andReinhardt (1866) managed to attributemost of the differences pointed out byScoresby to age and sex segregationwithin the whale population, but theywere less able to dismiss the observa­tions of Zorgdrager, "a Dutchman ofgreat experience." Zorgdrager (1720)suggested that "west-ice whales,"those killed between Spitsbergen andGreenland, were different from"south-ice whales," those killed southof Spitsbergen. "South-ice whales"had thinner, softer, yellow blubber; theyappeared to come from the east andreturn to the east during the exceptionalyears when they appeared at all nearSpitsbergen; and they were relativelynaive and approachable compared with"west-ice whales." Eschricht andReinhardt (1866) allowed that thesecharacteristics could constitute evi­dence of geographic, but not necessar­ily systematic, separation. ButZorgdrager also had claimed that"south- ice whales" had a "more even"back than "west-ice whales," and thisthey found more difficult to reconcilewith the single-species concept. Theproblem of variability within what isnow called the Spitsbergen stock is be­yond resolution; it is also beside thepoint as long as the population remainsnear extinction. There may be interest­ing parallels between this and the "in­gutuk" problem in northern Alaska(Braham et aI., 1980).

There are different opinions abouthow far eastward bowheads from theSpitsbergen stock wander(ed) (Fig. I).Eschricht and Reinhardt (1866) were

Marine Fisheries Review

doubtful of the species' occurrence asfar east as Novaya Zemlya, and Ruud(1937) stated that bowheads are gener­ally absent between Novaya Zemlyaand Bering Strait. Tomilin (1957)evaluated these claims in light of oldRussian literature and judged them to bein need of qualification. While some ofhis sources are not particularly convinc­ing with respect to species identifica­tion, enough of them are offered toleave little doubt that bowheads oc­cur(red), at least sporadically, as fareast as Novaya Zemlya and possiblyeven to the Kara Sea. Tomilin's argu­ment was strengthened in May 1963when a bowhead was sighted offNovaya Zemlya (at lat. 73°50'N, long.49°20'E) by Norwegian small whalehunters (Jonsgard, 1964) and again, inMay 1973, when an adult and calfwere seen swimming northeastward atlat. 74°40'N, long. 52°20'E (Ben­jaminsen et aI., 1976). GivenZorgdrager's (1720) conviction (seeabove) that "south-ice whales" came toSpitsbergen from the east, it is reason­able to suppose there was (and may stillbe) either an eastern stock of bowheadsin the Barents and Kara Seas or a part ofthe Spitsbergen stock which spent atleast part of some years in these waters.

Another unanswered question is thewinter whereabouts of Spitsbergenbowheads. Since virtually all huntingoccurred in spring, summer, or fall,there are, to my knowledge, no pub­lished winter observations of bowheadsbetween east Greenland and the EastSiberian Sea. Southwell (1898), with­out giving evidence, stated thatbowheads winter east of Greenland atabout lat. 65°N; Gray (1931) referred to"their supposed winter quarters, be­tween Iceland and Cape Farewell." Es­chricht and Reinhardt (1866) claimed"we know that it [the bowhead] some­times repairs to the north coast of ice­land" but gave no supporting evidence.Saemundsson (1939) asserted that" norecords as to its occurrence in Icelandicwaters are at hand, " though he admi ttedthat in exceptional ice-years thebowhead probably did come close tothe island's northwest coast. Scoresby(1820) knew of "some rare instances"of large whales being seen early in the

Sept.-Oct. 1980

season along the ice edge extendingfrom Point Lookout (Spitsbergen) toBear Island, which suggests winteringin the Norwegian or Barents Sea. Gray(1931) noted that there is open water"north of Siberia" in winter, and im­plied that some bowheads, in someyears at least, overwinter(ed) there.

The best that can be said is that thepopulation probably remains close tothe southern boundary of winter ice andmoves northward as the ice cover re­cedes and disintegrates in spring.Robert Gray (1889), an experiencedwhaler, explained: " ... the area inhab­ited by the Mysticetus might be rep­resented by a band of variable breadthrunning parallel to the edge of the ice,the animal being most usually presentwhere the temperature of the water isjust above the freezing point."

The bowhead's distribution in north­east Atlantic waters from springthrough autumn is relatively wellmapped. In 1634 Dutch sailors winter­ing on Jan Mayen first noticed bow­heads passing the island on 27 March,and whales were seen daily "in larger orsmaller numbers" until the end of April(Southwell, 1898). Saemundsson(1939) reported a sighting at the iceedge 40 miles off the northwest coast ofIceland in spring 1879. According toSouthwell, the whales were next seenoff western Spitsbergen in mid-May,being found north and west of therethroughout the summer.

Gray (1936) summarized Scoresby'sreflections on the principal whalinggrounds and seasons. In April whaleswere caught in open water, outside theice, within view of Hackluyt's Head­land at about lat. 800 N. (According toGray (1931), some autumn whal ingtook place there, too.) By the end ofApril this episode would end, as thewhales, many accompanied by calves,dispersed into the ice. Hunting resumedin May and lasted through June or Julybetween lat. 78° and 80 0 N, whenwhales were found "among the ice; inbays or 'bights' in its margin; amongthe broken or 'pack' ice; among theunbroken ice or 'floes' and often be­tween the two kinds of ice." DuringMay, Spitsbergen was often in sightfrom where the whales were caught.

Scoresby (1823) noted that before1814 most whaling was done betweenlat. 76° and 80 0 N and at lat. 79°N within"thirty or forty leagues" ofSpitsbergen. After 1814, however, thehunting was so poor in these areas thatnew grounds had to be found. Scoresbyand others began thereafter to work theice between lat. 71 ° and 74oN, close tothe Greenland coast. Southwell (1898)described what he called the "southfishing ground" as between lat. 72° and75°N at about long. BOW, off eastGreenland, and it was "fished" mainlybetween mid-June and early August.Apparently it was this "south fishingground" that Vibe (1967) had in mindwhen he asserted: "The main summerfeeding ground of the Greenland Whaleoff Northeast Greenland seems to bethe continental slope between 200 and1000 m."

An additional whaling ground wascalled the "'southward' fishing station"(Scoresby quoted by Gray, 1936). It wasin open water or "bay ice" to the southof Spitsbergen at about lat. 76°N (withHorn Sound and Cape Lookout some­times in sight). This may be whereZorgdrager's "south-ice whales" werefound.

Gray (1936), like Eschricht andReinhardt (1866), dismissed Scoresby'sconcerns about variability amongbowheads by concluding that "differ­ences between the whales caught at thedifferent fishings seem to have beenmerely a matter of age and sex." Thewhales caught in ice between lat. 78°and 800 N were presumably immature;those killed in April at lat. 80 0 N,"breeding females"; those taken at lat.76°N from April to July, adult males;and those found in summer ice off eastGreenland, mostly males.

Historical Status

There is little point in recounting de­tails of the Spitsbergen stock's declineto commercial extinction. The averagenumber of whales taken per voyage byeach Peterhead vessel was 16.8 in theperiod 1800-09; it declined steadilythereafter to J. 7 between 1850 and 1859(Gray, 1929). The total fleet caught 85whales in the Greenland Sea in theperiod 1880-89, but only 38 between

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Table 1.-Twentieth century records 01 bowhead whales east of Cape Farewell.

Date Number Nature of evidence Location Source

1900-09 28 Killed Off east Greenland Gray, 19291910 5 Killed Between lat. 78'N. long. l'W Lubbock. 1937:450

and lat. 79'N, long. 1'E.1911 Killed Svalbard JonsgArd, 1977:4241917 Sighted In ice off east Greenland Ruud, 1937

between lat. 64' and 65'NSummer Killed At the ice edge north Ruud, 1937; and see1932 of Spitsbergen JonsgArd, 19641940 Sighted Mouth 01 Scoresby Sound, Vibe, 1967

east GreenlandAugust Sighted In drift ice at lat. 76'N Vibe.19671953 40 mi. east of Store Koldewey.

east GreenlandAugust 20, Sighted Off northwest Spitsbergen at Christiansen, 19621958 lat. 79'48'N, long. 10'07'EMay 23, Sighled West of Novaya Zemlya at JonsgArd, 19641963 lat. 73'50'N, long. 49'20'EJune Sighted Mouth of Scoresby Sound, Vibe, 19671964 east GreenlandMay 29, 2 (adult Sighted West of Novaya Zemlya at Benjaminsen et aI., 19761973 & young) lat. 74'40'N, long. 52'20'EAugust 1 Stranded parts Mistakodden at the east Larsen, 19761974 recovered side of SpitsbergenApril 2 Sighted Off northeast Greenland at Anonymous, In press23.1979 lat. 80'45'N, long. 05'33'EAug. 2, Sighted (Identifi· Off SE Greenland at JonsgArd. 1980'1979 cation unconfirmed) approx. lat 61'05'N,

long. 42'10'WMay 21 Sighted Off Finnmark. North JonsgArd.1980'and 25, Norway, al approx.1980 lat. 71'00'N, long.

28'51'E

1890 and 1899 and 28 in 1900-09. Gray(1929) reflected: " ... in the 'eightieswe seldom saw more than one or two ata time and seldom more than a dozen ortwo in a voyage. In 1890 only six wereseen by all the ships, and in 1898 not asingle one." The continued pursuit ofbowheads east of Greenland in thesewaning years of the fishery was "sub­sidized" by the walruses, polar bears,harp and hooded seals, bottlenosewhales, narwhals, and musk oxen thatcould, if nothing more, at least cut thelosses of an unsuccessful voyage (seeLubbock,1937).

Reasons for Decline andFailure to Recover

For more than half a century now theSpitsbergen stock has enjoyed virtuallycomplete immunity from hunting. Onlyfour animals are known to have beentaken since 1911, and those were killedby Norwegians in 1932 (Table I). If thepopulation were still viable at the turnof the century, there is reason to thinksome recovery in numbers would havebeen achieved. However, there is noevidence whatsoever to suggest that thepopulation has increased. There is, onthe contrary, reason to fear that theSpitsbergen stock was below a criticallevel when its exploitation ceased andthat it has either stabilized at a relictnumber or is in the process of decl iningto extinction.

There are several lines of argument toaccount for the Spitsbergen stock's ap­parently drastic decline. Some are lessplausible than others. James Lamont(1861), a walrus hunting yachtsman,observed that by the middle of the 19thcentury the whales had "entirely de­serted" the vicinity of Spitsbergen. Hebelieved the "principal reason to be thatthe seas around Spitsbergen have be­come too shallow for them." Vibe(1967) constructed a different ecologi­cal explanation, to wit, that "specialconditions of currents, drift-ice, andproduction in the Arctic seas were thedeciding factors in its [the bowhead's]mass occurrence in different places atdifferent times." He assumed that in­stability of the whale's habitat made itssurvival tenuous enough without whal­ing and that whaling simply hastened an

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1 See texl footnote 2.

ebbing cycle for the species in the east­ern North Atlantic.

Sergeant (1978) suggested that re­covery of bowheads in Canada's easternArctic could by retarded by killerwhale, Orcinus orca, predation. Sincekiller whales are common enough in thesubarctic eastern North Atlantic to havebeen themsel ves the object of commer­cial exploitation in the 20th century(Jonsgard and Lyshoel, (970), theirrole in preventing the Spitsbergenstock's recovery cannot be entirely dis­counted.

Gray (1889) suggested that competi­tion for food between bowheads andblue whales, Balaenoptera musculus,(and possibly in this case includingother balaenopterids) was an importantfactor in preventing the former's recov­ery. As he put it, " ... the struggle allalong has been one of a slow swimmerwith long whalebone plates versus aswift and active animal with shortplates, with this qualification, however,that Mysticetus has become specializedto inhabit those parts of the feeding­grounds covered by ice, its congener[sic] to occupy rather the open ocean.The prolonged prosecution of the

Whale fishery, and the consequent re­duction in numbers of the GreenlandWhale, has favoured a correspondingincrease in the abundance of the BlueWhale, at the same time permitting itsintrusion upon the habitat of Mys­ticetus, and hence its frequent appear­ance amongst the ice, where for weeksthe ships now search vainly for theGreenland Right Whale." Since bluewhales were themselves heavilyexploited in the eastern North Atlanticafter 1890 (Jonsgard, 1977), thebowhead should have had a timely op­portunity to regain its niche. Sergeant(1978) considered Gray's competition"hypothesis" and found it difficult toaccept, "unless the ice-covered areawas so poor in plankton that thebowhead had to move out to the edges,and then, surely competition would al­ways have occurred and the niches be­come well defined."

However susceptible to ecologicalinstabilities, predation, or interspeciescompetition the bowhead may be, itsdemise was most Iikely a direct result ofoverhunting. The whalers sparedneither males nor females, young norold. Gray (1929) referred tothe "waste-

Marine Fisheries Review

ful method of carrying on the fishing"that invol ved the frequent capture ofvery young whales. This practice be­came common in the late 18th centuryand continued to the end of the fishery.Southwell (1898) observed that"Females accompanied by suckers arenow rarely met with, and it follows thatthey must either have a secure hiding­place . . . or that reproduction has formany years been greatly arrested, orhas al mos t ceased."

Present Status

Published 20th century records ofbowheads in the Spitsbergen stock areaare listed in Table I. As Jonsgard (1964)inferred, the paucity of bowhead sight­ings in the present century cannot beattributed solely to a lack of observereffort. Norwegian small whale hunters(looking for minke, Balaenopteraacutorostrata; bottlenose, Hyperodonarnpullatus; pilot, Globiocephalarnalaena; and killer whales) have beenworking in the vicinity of Spitsbergensince at least 1949 (see Jonsgard,1977). Some of these vessels have car­ried observers from the Institute ofMari ne Researc h (Bergen), whose pres­ence on board probably improves thechance of a sighting's being noted andreported.

I have not attempted to correlatesmall whale hunting vessel cruisetracks and schedules with those of theearlier bowhead whaling vessels. Re­ports by Christensen (1972, 1974) andBenjaminsen et al. (1976) gave detailsof Norwegian small whale researchcruises during recent years nearSpitsbergen and east Greenland. It maybe possible to plot and compare Norwe­gian searching effort with historicallyprofitable bowhead whaling areas (byseason) in order to document changes inwhale abundance or distribution. Ifmodern Norwegian small whale huntershave in fact been searching (in appro­priate seasons) areas where bowheadsonce were common, then the lac k ofmore incidental sightings takes ongreater meaning. However, if their tim­ing or routes have been out of phasewith those of the early bowhead whal­ers, then it is possible that more whalessurvive than is generally assumed.

Sept.-Oct. 1980

Jonsgard 2 is not sanguine about theexistence of a viable stock in theSpitsbergen-Barents Sea area. Hesuggests that the few whales seen theresince World War II may be strays fromother stocks.

In any case, the IWC ScientificCommittee's conclusion-that "thestock is now at a very low level" ([WC,1978) -seems a fair assessment untilnew information becomes available toargue otherwise.

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Benjaminsen, T., J. Berlund, D. Christensen, IChristensen, I. Huse, and O. Sandnes. 1976.Merking, observasjoner og adferdsstudier avhval i Barentshavet og ved Svalbard i 1974 og1975 [Marking, sightings and behavior studiesof whales in the Barents Sea and at Svalbard in1974 and 1975]. [In Norw.. Engl. abstr.] FiskenHavel 76(2):9-23.

Braham, H. w., F. E. Durham, G. H. Jarrell, andS. Leatherwood. 1980. Ingutuk: A morpholog­ical variant of the bowhead whale, Ba/aenamyslicelus. Mar. Fish. Rev. 42(9-10):70-73.

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