Eubalaena

About Eubalaena

Eubalaena was separated from the bowhead’s genus on a shorter head, a temperate-to-subpolar rather than Arctic distribution, and the presence of callosities. Whether it contained one species or three was argued for most of the twentieth century; genetic work published in 2000 settled it at three, corresponding to the North Atlantic, the North Pacific and the Southern Ocean.

The three have fared very differently. The southern right whale was hunted hard but across a vast range and has recovered substantially. The North Atlantic right whale has not: the population numbers a few hundred, and the two things killing it — entanglement in fixed fishing gear and collisions with vessels — are both concentrated in the busy coastal shelf waters it depends on. The eastern North Pacific population may be down to the tens of animals.