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The western population of North Pacific right whales remains poorly understood and current abundance estimates, range between 400‐1,100 animals. Anthropogenic threats appear to be increasing. Therefore, the Committee: (1) welcomes new information provided by Burdin (SC/69A/NH/04rev1) and encourages every effort be made to match North Pacific right whale photographs between the Japanese and Russian catalogues; (2) recognises there have been several North Pacific right whale interactions with fishing gear (Tajima et al., 2018), that these whales are at increased risk of entanglement, particularly in the northern part of their range as is currently experienced by bowhead whales (George et al., 2021), and recommends new information on this topic; (3) recommends a review of past abundance estimates and a synthesis of new information that can be used to generate new abundance estimates of WNP right whales for submission to the ASI SWG; |