1969/10/01 by D. E. Sergeant, David Sergeant, P. F. Brodie · 4 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Arctic and Antarctic ice dynamics #Marine and coastal plant biology #Marine animal studies overview
paper · doi:10.1139/f69-251
crossref issued 1969/10/01 · crossref published 1969/10/01 · crossref published-print 1969/10/01 · openalex publication_date 1969/10/01 · crossref created 2011/04/25 · crossref deposited 2020/01/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/20 · crossref indexed 2026/07/26
Measurements of length, girth, and weight show that male white whales grow larger than females. The smallest white whales come from western Hudson Bay, the White Sea, and Bristol Bay, Alaska. Animals of intermediate size inhabit all other arctic Canadian localities sampled and also the St. Lawrence River and the Kara and Barents seas. The largest white whales inhabit West Greenland waters, the Okhotsk Sea, and the coast of Sakhalin. Extreme differences in body weight of adult males are about threefold. Nonoverlapping differences in size indicate isolation of some adjacent populations of white whales; equal or overlapping sizes suggest, but cannot prove, mixing of other populations. Size can be positively correlated with marine productivity, being lowest in the arctic and in estuaries and highest in subarctic seas. Since white whales most often grow largest at the southern ends of their range, their restriction to the arctic is attributed either to competition with certain of the Delphinidae or to predation from killer whales, Orcinus orca L., or to both. Both putative competitors and predator lack adaptations for arctic life.