Arctic TrackerUniversity of Akureyri · UNAK

All species / Balaena mysticetus

Balaena mysticetus

Bowhead Whale · Linnaeus, 1758

Balaena mysticetus, Bowhead Whale
(c) Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA) · via inaturalist, stored and served from this site
Red List, global
LC
Least Concern, 2018
First CITES listing
I
Appendix I, 1975
CITES trade records
517
1979–2023 · exporter-reported
Unit dimensions
4
reported separately, never summed
NAMMCO catch entries
none
NAMMCO reports a subset of marine mammals
Seizure records
13
reported taxon matches

One of 43: each square a species, coloured by its latest global Red List category, this one ringed. Bowhead Whale is among the cetaceans.

In summary derived

Balaena mysticetus, Bowhead Whale, is placed in family Balaenidae, order Cetacea, class Mammalia. The earliest CITES listing row the corpus holds for it is Appendix I, dated 1975. The corpus records 1 dated listing row in total.

Its latest global Red List assessment is Least Concern, published 2018. It carries 2 earlier global assessments on the current scale and 6 on scales that were superseded before the current categories and cannot be compared with them. An assessment at Europe scope records Vulnerable. This site reports the global category; the two are not interchangeable.

The corpus holds 517 exporter-reported CITES trade records for it, from 1979 to 2023, reported across 4 unit dimensions. The most frequently recorded term is baleen: 159 records across 3 unit dimensions, of which 136 are measured in specimens. The corpus holds no NAMMCO catch records for it. 13 seizure records are attributed to it, being those whose reported taxon matches the species.

Composed from 17 corpus fields, by template, with no model
  • species.class
  • species.family
  • species.order_name
  • species_catch.catch_total
  • species_iucn.is_global
  • species_iucn.scope_code
  • species_iucn.status
  • species_iucn.year_published
  • species_listing.appendix
  • species_listing.listing_date
  • species_seizure.*
  • species_trade.dimension
  • species_trade.first_year
  • species_trade.last_year
  • species_trade.record_count
  • species_trade.reporter_type
  • species_trade.term

Each sentence is generated from the columns above and nothing else. The same corpus produces the same text every time. Where a field is absent the sentence is omitted rather than hedged.

Overview curated

Taxonomy entered by a named curator and versioned in the repository.

Class
Mammalia
Order
Cetacea
Family
Balaenidae
First CITES listing
1975
Global Red List status
LCLeast Concern, assessed 2018
Regional status (Europe)
VURegional, 2023. Not the species status.
3 subpopulations are assessed separately

A single status for this species does not describe them: Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort Sea subpopulation, East Greenland-Svalbard-Barents Sea subpopulation, Okhotsk Sea subpopulation.

Content withheld pending expert review

8 narrative sections for this species were machine-drafted and are not shown. No subject expert has reviewed and signed them.

Trade derived

CITES Trade Database v2025.1, extracted 13 June 2025.

There is no single trade total

Quantities are reported per unit dimension, per traded term, and per reporting side. These are not additive: kilograms and individual animals have no common unit, a live animal is not a carving, and an importer report and an exporter report are two accounts of one shipment rather than two shipments.

Figures below are exporter-reported.

count in specimens
483
mass in kg
32
length in m
1
packaging in containers
1

Records per dimension. Not additive across units.

Trade over time

listed 19751979: 1 records1982: 2 records1983: 7 records1984: 2 records1985: 1 records1986: 1 records1988: 2 records1990: 3 records1991: 3 records1992: 4 records1993: 9 records1994: 2 records1995: 5 records1996: 9 records1997: 6 records1998: 9 records1999: 7 records2000: 9 records2001: 9 records2002: 8 records2003: 13 records2004: 7 records2005: 8 records2006: 15 records2007: 6 records2008: 11 records2009: 15 records2010: 44 records2011: 15 records2012: 50 records2013: 19 records2014: 25 records2015: 41 records2016: 20 records2017: 15 records2018: 23 records2019: 15 records2020: 20 records2021: 12 records2022: 25 records2023: 19 records19801990200020102020
Peak 50 records in 2012. Trade records per year, exporter-reported, every term and unit counted as records, not quantities.
listed 19752005: 4 specimens2006: 4 specimens2008: 126 specimens2009: 11 specimens2010: 26 specimens2011: 8 specimens2012: 368 specimens2013: 6 specimens2014: 43 specimens2015: 117 specimens2016: 16 specimens2017: 2,488 specimens2018: 16 specimens2019: 3 specimens2020: 6 specimens2021: 5 specimens2022: 6 specimens2023: 14 specimens19801990200020102020
Peak 2,488 specimens in 2017. Quantity of baleen, the term with most records (136), in specimens, exporter-reported. Other terms are in the tables below, each in its own unit.

count measured in specimens

483 of 517 records carry a quantity in specimens. CITES leaves the unit blank to mean a count of the term.

Top 8 of 14. Bars count trade records per term, not specimens, all sources combined; the table splits them by source and gives the quantity in specimens.
TermQuantityRecordsYearsSource
baleen152 specimens802005–2023W
specimens3,533 specimens591992–2023W
carvings194 specimens431992–2015W
carvings77 specimens391991–2022O
bone carvings54 specimens362002–2023O
baleen3,085 specimens352008–2023O
bones63 specimens331991–2023O
bones40 specimens271988–2017W
garments26 specimens261999–2023O
baleen30 specimens212010–2023I
bone carvings32 specimens141995–2022W
bone pieces55 specimens92006–2020O

Showing the 12 term and source combinations with the most records, of 35.

mass measured in kg

32 of 517 records carry a quantity in kg.

Bars count trade records per term, not kg, all sources combined; the table splits them by source and gives the quantity in kg.
TermQuantityRecordsYearsSource
baleen48.15 kg222010–2023W
specimens6.71 kg62010–2021W
meat28 kg22014–2023W
specimens5 kg11982not recorded
carvings0.14 kg12015W
2 smaller units: m (1 record), containers (1 record)

length measured in m

1 of 517 records carry a quantity in m.

TermQuantityRecordsYearsSource
baleen3 m12020W

packaging measured in containers

1 of 517 records carry a quantity in containers.

TermQuantityRecordsYearsSource
specimens1 container11998W

CITES listings curated

CoP decisions, cross-checked against the appendix reported on trade records.

DateAppendixAnnotationStatus
1975-07-01IFormerly included in Balaena spp. PRÓFA NOTE aftur prófa hvort takkin lagistfirst listing

Convention on Migratory Species

Listed under CMS: Appendix I.

IUCN Red List derived

Assessment history. Scope is always stated: a regional assessment is not the species status.

This history crosses a criteria revision

Categories from before 2001 come from earlier Red List systems. Three kinds are kept apart.

LR/lc and LR/nt are the modern LC and NT under their old names, so they are plotted as those categories and the line runs through them: nothing changed but the wording.

LR/cd was discontinued with no successor. This project reads it as Near Threatened, following a published crosswalk between the old and new Red List systems, and the chart marks such a point hollow and names both codes, because placing a category is not the same as finding it published.

The pre-1994 codes (E, V, K, T and the rest) are not on the risk order at all, so they sit below the axis and the line breaks across them. A category change across a criteria revision is not a change in extinction risk, and none of these is scored as a movement: the ledger refuses every one of them at gate 3.

LCNTVUENCR19651970198019902000201020231996: LR/cd, Lower Risk, conservation dependent (1994 system, discontinued 2001) (global). Placed at Near Threatened by the crosswalk this project adopted (Lin et al. 2025, doi:10.1111/cobi.70103); the category IUCN published is LR/cd.2008: Least Concern (global)2012: Least Concern (global)2018: Least Concern (global)?1965: Not applicable, which records that no assessment was made — carries no position on the risk order1986: Endangered (pre-1994 criteria), from a superseded Red List system — carries no position on the risk order1988: Endangered (pre-1994 criteria), from a superseded Red List system — carries no position on the risk order1990: Vulnerable (pre-1994 criteria), from a superseded Red List system — carries no position on the risk order1994: Vulnerable (pre-1994 criteria), from a superseded Red List system — carries no position on the risk order2023: Vulnerable, assessed at Europe scope, not the global statusEurope2007: Not assessed, assessed at Europe scope, not the global statusEuropeLCNTVUENCR1965198019902000201020231996: LR/cd, Lower Risk, conservation dependent (1994 system, discontinued 2001) (global). Placed at Near Threatened by the crosswalk this project adopted (Lin et al. 2025, doi:10.1111/cobi.70103); the category IUCN published is LR/cd.2008: Least Concern (global)2012: Least Concern (global)2018: Least Concern (global)?1965: Not applicable, which records that no assessment was made — carries no position on the risk order1986: Endangered (pre-1994 criteria), from a superseded Red List system — carries no position on the risk order1988: Endangered (pre-1994 criteria), from a superseded Red List system — carries no position on the risk order1990: Vulnerable (pre-1994 criteria), from a superseded Red List system — carries no position on the risk order1994: Vulnerable (pre-1994 criteria), from a superseded Red List system — carries no position on the risk order2023: Vulnerable, assessed at Europe scope, not the global statusEurope2007: Not assessed, assessed at Europe scope, not the global statusEurope
  • published global assessment
  • placed on the scale by a crosswalk
  • not on this scale (below the axis)
  • regional assessment, never joined
Vertical position is the IUCN risk order, not a measured quantity: the gaps between categories are equal on the page and not in nature. Anything that is not one of the nine modern categories carries no position on that order — Data Deficient, a superseded category, or a record that no assessment was made — so it sits below the axis and the line breaks across it rather than joining through. Each point names which it is. One point is hollow: the category was discontinued with no successor and is placed on this scale by the crosswalk this project adopted (Lin et al. 2025, doi:10.1111/cobi.70103), not published on it. The code IUCN published is in the table below and in the point's own label. Regional assessments are shown but never joined to global ones; they describe a different population.

Category movement since listing: not scored. Gate 3: the baseline category E comes from a pre-2001 Red List system and is not on the modern ordinal scale. How this is defined and why some species are not scored

YearCategoryMeaningScopeStatus
2023VUVulnerableEuropecurrent for this scope
2018LCLeast ConcernGlobalcurrent for this scope
2012LCLeast ConcernGlobal
2008LCLeast ConcernGlobal
2007NANot assessedEurope (scope corrected)
1996LR/cdLower Risk, conservation dependent (1994 system, discontinued 2001)Global
1994VVulnerable (pre-1994 criteria)Global
1990VVulnerable (pre-1994 criteria)Global
1988EEndangered (pre-1994 criteria)Global
1986EEndangered (pre-1994 criteria)Global
1965N/ANot applicableGlobal

Reported catch derived

NAMMCO catch exports dated 11 June 2025. A reported zero is stored as zero, distinct from an unknown.

No NAMMCO catch records for this species. NAMMCO reports on a subset of marine mammals, so an absence here is expected for most species and does not mean no catch occurred.

Illegal trade seizures derived

Seizure records whose reported taxon resolves to this species.

What the seizure source records

13 seizure records name this species. Matching is on the taxon the source reported, case aside, and each record below shows the reported name, so a match that is not literal can be seen for what it is. Across the whole compilation, 225 of 919 rows match one of the 43 species and the rest name other taxa.

Quantities are unitless. The source gives no date or place, so the table shows the product and the reported taxon.

Top 8 of 9. Records per product, not a quantity.
ProductReported as
baleenbalaena mysticetus
baleenBalaena mysticetus
boneBalaena mysticetus
bonebalaena mysticetus
bone carvingBalaena mysticetus
bone pieceBalaena mysticetus
bone piecebalaena mysticetus
bone productbalaena mysticetus
carvingBalaena mysticetus
derivativeBalaena mysticetus
garmentbalaena mysticetus
garmentBalaena mysticetus
unspecifiedbalaena mysticetus

References withheld

Machine-proposed bindings. Shown only where an expert has signed the profile and the binding is live.

No references are recorded for this species: none is shown, and none was machine-proposed for review.

Timeline curated

Curated events. Those with no corroborating table in this database are marked.

DateEventTypeCorroboration
2023IUCN Red List Assessment (2023)iucn_assessmentchecked against iucn_assessments
2021-06-15CITES Trade: baleencites_tradechecked against cites_trade_records
2019-06-15CITES Trade: skin piecescites_tradechecked against cites_trade_records
2018IUCN Red List Assessment (2018)iucn_assessmentchecked against iucn_assessments
2015-04-09CITES Trade Suspensioncites_suspensioncurated
2012IUCN Red List Assessment (2012)iucn_assessmentchecked against iucn_assessments
2008IUCN Red List Assessment (2008)iucn_assessmentchecked against iucn_assessments
2007IUCN Red List Assessment (2007)iucn_assessmentchecked against iucn_assessments
1996IUCN Red List Assessment (1996)iucn_assessmentchecked against iucn_assessments
1994IUCN Red List Assessment (1994)iucn_assessmentchecked against iucn_assessments
1990IUCN Red List Assessment (1990)iucn_assessmentchecked against iucn_assessments
1988IUCN Red List Assessment (1988)iucn_assessmentchecked against iucn_assessments
1986IUCN Red List Assessment (1986)iucn_assessmentchecked against iucn_assessments
1975-07-01Listed in CITES Appendix Icites_listingchecked against cites_listings
1965IUCN Red List Assessment (1965)iucn_assessmentchecked against iucn_assessments

Events marked curated are not matched by a row in a corroborating table, either because none applies or because the table holds no such row, and rest on the curator alone. They are shown, and marked, rather than presented as equivalent to a table-checked fact.