Sei Whale

(Balaenoptera borealis)
By: Emily Cokl

Location
The Sei Whale is pelagic
Lives in temperate oceanic waters all over the world
Feed in cold water during the summer
Found in the water off Norway, Shetland, Orkney, and the Faroe Islands

Migrate to tropical and subtropical water during the winter

Found from the south-west Bering Sea to the Gulf of Alaska and along the
coasts of Labrador, Greenland, and Iceland

There are two separate populations of Sei Whales in the Northern

and Southern hemispheres

Size and Appearance

Weight: about 20 tons
Length: 14 to 20 meters
Females are usually one to two meters longer than males

Color: dark gray or bluish-gray

Ventral grooves are grayish-white

Dorsal fin located two-thirds of the way down the back

Have 38 to 56 ventral grooves
Two rows of 300 to 380 baleen plates

Behavior
Can reach speeds of up to 50km per hour
Submerge five to ten minutes
Not deep divers
Form in groups of 2 to 5 or are found individually
Possible for thousands to come together when there is enough food
for all of them

Feeding Behavior
Members of the baleen family
Use baleen plates to filter food from water
Feed by gulping and swimming
Usually feed at dawn
Two blowholes that cause the blow to be V-shaped
Blow is 10 to 13 feet high

Eats about 2,000 lbs of food per day

Feed mostly on surface plankton
Have been heard to emit a sonic burst of seven to ten pulses

Lifespan and Reproduction

Live for 50 to 70 years
Can be affected by endoparasitic helminths that cause problems in their liver
and kidney

Become sexually mature at 6 to 12

Mating season:
November to February (Northern Hemisphere)
May to July (Southern Hemisphere)

Females breed every 2 to 3 years

Gestation period: 11 to 13 months
Single calf

Human Impact: Whaling

Whalers began hunting Sei whales in the 1860s
They are hunted for meat and oil

1950s: Blue and Fin whale stocks had been depleted

Whalers began to hunt Sei whales for commercial purposes

Between 1951 and 1971, almost 107,000 Sei whales were killed in the
Antarctic
Stocks of Sei whales became depleted even more in the 1970s and
1980s
Today, 50 Sei whales are killed every year by Japanese whalers
Iceland is still allowed an annual quota

Population Declines
A study in the North Pacific showed that the population had declined
from 42,000 in 1963 to 8,600 in 1974
Southern Hemisphere population had been reduced to about 24,000
in 1980
It originally had a population of about 100,000

It is estimated that the population is about 4,600 in the North Atlantic

The Pacific population is between 22,000 and 37,000

Human Impact: Pollution

Sei whales can be harmed by factors other than whaling

global warming
pollution
shipping strikes
entanglement in fishing gear

Human Impact: Protecting Whales

1985: The International Whaling Commission stopped all commercial
whaling of the species
They are considered endangered on IUCNs Red List of Threatened
Species
NMFS published a final recovery plan for them in 2011
They later published a draft recovery plan

Sei Whales are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act
of 1972 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973

Sources

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/mammals/cetaceans/seiwhale.htm
http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/2475/0
http://marinebio.org/species.asp?id=192
http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/cetaceans/about
/sei_whale/
http://acsonline.org/fact-sheets/sei-whale/
Scientific Article:
Prieto, Rui, Monica A. Silva, Martine Berube, Per J. Palsbll (2012). "Migratory
destinations and sex composition of sei whales (Balaenoptera borealis) transiting
through the Azores". SC/64/RMP6, pp. 1-7.
http://iwc.int/private/downloads/dfalo3uiezkgckg0sw0ok44w4/SC-64-RMP6.pdf