A whale with a large head and a white chin, living in icy northern seas.
It has a dark body and no dorsal fin. A thick layer of blubber insulates it in cold water.
Bowhead whales produce underwater “songs” by combining and repeating sounds. Many different songs are heard through winter days and nights in the Spitsbergen population.
A 2018 study analysed recordings from western Fram Strait, between Greenland and Svalbard. Three recording seasons between 2010 and 2014 yielded at least 184 song types. Recorders sampled the first fourteen to seventeen minutes of each hour; researchers distinguished types by their frequencies, durations and arrangements of sounds.
Song-type diversity peaked in December and January. Most types lasted hours to days, and few persisted beyond a month, although some continued through winter. Each type appeared in only one deployment season, with no recurrence between the sampled years. New types appeared and disappeared as winter progressed.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
OSPAR’s 2020 assessment of the Spitsbergen population identified changing sea-ice habitat, underwater noise, vessel strikes and fishing-gear entanglement as conservation concerns. With shipping expanding into less ice-covered waters, it proposed raising concerns about vessel impacts with the International Maritime Organization and asking the International Whaling Commission to prioritize this population’s status and threats.