POPULATION SIZE

Northern bottlenose whales are characterized as extremely uncommon or rare in waters of the U.S. Atlantic Exclusive Economic Zone. The two sightings of three individuals constituted less than 0.1 % of the 11,156 cetacean sightings in the 1978-82 CeTAP surveys. Both sightings were in the spring, along the 2,000 m isobath (CeTAP 1982). In 1993 and 1996, two sightings of single animals, and in 1996, a single sighting of six animals (one juvenile), were made during summer shipboard surveys conducted along the southern edge of Georges Bank (Anon. 1993; Anon. 1996). Northern bottlenose whales are distributed in the North Atlantic from Nova Scotia to about 70E in the Davis Strait, along the east coast of Greenland to 77E and from England to the west coast of Spitzbergen. It is largely a deepwater species and is very seldom found in waters less than 2,000 m deep (Mead 1989). There are two main centers of bottlenose whale distribution in the western north Atlantic, one in the area called "The Gully " just north of Sable Island, Nova Scotia, and the other in Davis Strait off northern Labrador (Reeves et al. 1993). Studies at the entrance to the Gully from 1988-1995 identified 237 individuals and estimated the local population size at about 230 animals (95 % C.I. 160-360) (Whitehead et al. 1997). Mitchell and Kozicki (1975) documented stranding records in the Bay of Fundy and as far south as Rhode Island. Stock definition is unknown