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Balaena is a genus of cetacean (whale) in the family Balaenidae. Balaena is considered a monotypic genus, as it has only a single extant species, the bowhead whale (B. mysticetus). It was named in 1758 by Linnaeus, who at the time considered all of the right whales (and the bowhead) as a single species.
The four species of the Balaenidae are found in temperate and polar waters; Eubalaena glacialis (North Atlantic right whale), Eubalaena japonica (North Pacific right whale), Eubalaena australis (southern right whale), and Balaena mysticetus (bowhead whale). Bowhead and right whales can reach up to 18 meters in length and over 100 tons at maturity.
The bowhead whale has been hunted for blubber, meat, oil, bones, and baleen. Like the right whale, it swims slowly, and floats after death, making it ideal for whaling. [86] Before commercial whaling, they were estimated to number 50,000. [87] Paleo-Eskimo sites indicate bowhead whales were eaten in sites from perhaps 4000 BC. Inuit people near ...
These artifacts suggested that bowhead whales can and have lived at least 130 years. Such data suggest the bowhead whale – a species that lives in the Arctic – tends to live longer on average.
Fewer than 400 individual North Atlantic right whales remain in the wild, and their numbers continue to decline. Oceana, a conservation group based in D.C., has reported numerous collisions ...
Balaenidae consists of two genera: Eubalaena (right whales) and Balaena (the bowhead whale, B. mysticetus). Balaenidae was thought to have consisted of only one genus until studies done through the early 2000s reported that bowhead whales and right whales are morphologically (different skull shape) and phylogenically different.
A research flight south of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket spotted seven different types of whales in unusually high numbers last month. Humpbacks, orcas, right whales: Unusual whale sightings ...
The closely related bowhead whale differs from the right whale by lacking any callosities, having a more arched jaw and longer baleen. The seasonal ranges of the two species do not overlap. The bowhead whale is found at the edge of the pack ice in more Arctic waters in the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea, and occurs in the Bering Sea only during ...