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Insights Into The Population Structure Of Blue Whales In The Eastern North Pacific From Recent Sightings And Photographic Identification, John Calambokidis, Jay Barlow, John K. B. Ford, Todd E. Chandler, Annie B. Douglas

United States Department of Commerce: Staff Publications

Blue whales were widely distributed in the North Pacific prior to the primary period of modern commercial whaling in the early 1900s. Despite concentrations of blue whale catches off British Columbia and in the Gulf of Alaska, there had been few documented sightings in these areas since whaling for blue whales ended in 1965. In contrast, large concentrations of blue whales have been documented off California and Baja California and in the eastern tropical Pacific since the 1970s, but it was not known if these animals were part of the same population that previously ranged into Alaskan waters. We document …