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Gentle giants of the sea, bowhead whales live in the coldest, most remote reaches of the world’s oceans. Amid the thick, omnipresent arctic pack ice, the only predator they encounter — aside from humans — is the killer whale. But humans pose the far greater threat to this species’ survival. Like most whales, this once-numerous cetacean was hunted nearly to extinction. Now, it faces the formidable threat of arctic oil drilling.
ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT PROFILE
PROTECTION STATUS: Endangered
YEAR PLACED ON LIST: 1970
RANGE: Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort seas in the western Arctic Ocean; Baffin Bay, Davis Strait, and Hudson Bay in the Canadian Arctic; the Okhotsk Sea in Russia; and Spitsbergen westward to Greenland in the far North Atlantic Ocean
THREATS: Oil and gas exploration and development, collisions with ships, industrial pollution, and global warming
POPULATION TREND: Four of the five remaining bowhead whale populations have fewer than 400 whales each. The largest population of bowhead whales is the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort stock, currently estimated at 10,000 individuals and rising.
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SAVING THE BOWHEAD WHALE
Bowhead whales living off the coast of Alaska should be an Endangered Species Act success story. Following the prohibition of commercial whaling, this population rebounded and now likely numbers more than 10,000 whales.
However, the bowhead whale’s continuing recovery is at risk from the intertwined consequences of our unquenchable thirst for oil. Bowhead whale habitat has been disturbed and polluted by offshore oil development in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, and as carbon dioxide further warms our planet, the arctic ice pack is rapidly melting.
Large-scale oil and gas development in bowhead habitat puts the species in grave danger by exposing the whales to disruptive noise levels, dangerous oil spills, and deadly collisions with ships, while global warming melts their icy abode and renders food sources less available. The Center is confronting these threats by challenging arctic offshore oil development in court and by fighting global warming in the courthouse, statehouse, and everywhere in between.
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Contact: Brendan Cummings
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