Common Minke Whale - Distribution

Distribution

Common minke whales have a disjointed distribution. In the North Atlantic, they occur as far north as Baffin Bay, Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, and Novaya Zemlya and as far south as 40° N (New Jersey) and the Hebrides and central North Sea during summer. They occur year-round off the Canary Islands. There are occasional sightings and strandings off Spain and Portugal, western Sahara, Mauritania, and Senegal. It is rare off the Azores and a vagrant in the Mediterranean Sea, with a single record in the Black Sea. During the winter it has been recorded off Bermuda, the Bahamas, the Antilles, and the east coast of the United States south of 40° N. In the western North Pacific, they range from the East China Sea, Yellow Sea and and Sea of Japan in the south to the Sea of Okhotsk and Bering and Chukchi Seas in the north. In the eastern North Pacific, they occur in the Gulf of Alaska south along the entire west coast of North America down to Baja California and into the Gulf of California. During winter, they've been acoustically recorded mainly between 15° and 35° N in the eastern and central North Pacific. The dwarf form occurs as far south as 65° S during summer, but was mainly caught between 55 and 62° S. It has also been recorded off most of the South Atlantic coast of South America, in the Beagle Channel, off South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, and as far north as 2° S (northern Brazil).