Bowhead Whale
Balaena mysticetus
Lives for 200 years under the Arctic ice — and smashes through it with its head.
The bowhead is the only baleen whale that lives in the Arctic all year round. It has the thickest blubber of any whale, a skull strong enough to break through sea ice, and a jaw so arched it looks like a bow, which is how it got its name. A few bowheads swimming today were probably born before the first car was built.
On the conservation status
Least Concern worldwide since 2018: commercial whaling stopped and numbers climbed back. Not every group has recovered — the Western Arctic population is around 15,000 whales, but the one near Svalbard is only a few hundred.
- Length
- Up to about 19 m (62 ft)
- Weight
- Up to about 90,000 kg (100 tons)
- Lifespan
- 200+ years — longer than any other mammal
- Diet
- Copepods and krill, strained through baleen
- Blubber
- 43–48 cm (17–19 in) thick
- Dorsal fin
- None at all
The good stuff.
The oldest mammal we know of
In 2007, a bowhead caught off Alaska turned out to have a harpoon tip from the 1880s buried in its blubber. Scientists who studied the eyes of other bowheads estimated that one was 211 years old — older than any other mammal ever recorded.
It breaks ice with its head
A bowhead can push up through sea ice about 20 cm thick with its huge, arched skull, to make itself a hole to breathe through.
A head a third of its body
The skull can be more than 5 metres long — about a third of the whole whale. Inside that bow-shaped jaw hang the longest baleen plates of any whale, which it uses to strain tiny animals out of the water.
The warmest coat in the ocean
Its blubber is 43–48 cm thick, more than any other whale's. It needs every centimetre: bowheads live in water that's around freezing all year.
The jazz singers of the Arctic
Humpback males in one area all sing the same song. Bowheads keep making up new ones: near Greenland, researchers recorded 184 different songs from a group of about 300 whales over four winters.
No fin, on purpose
Bowheads have no dorsal fin at all. For a whale that spends its life under and between sheets of ice, a smooth back is probably an advantage.
Wait, really?
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A bowhead eats about 100 tonnes of tiny crustaceans a year.
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Its white chin is dotted with black spots, like a necklace.
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Arctic peoples have hunted bowheads for thousands of years, and still take a small number each year under strict limits.
What it sounds like
Moans, groans and long, complicated songs that change from year to year. Bowheads are among the most varied singers in the sea.
We haven't found a recording we're allowed to share yet, so for now this one is a description.
Where you might see one
Only in the Arctic: off northern Alaska and Canada, around Greenland and Svalbard, and in the Sea of Okhotsk.
The trouble
- Sea ice loss as the Arctic warms
- More ships, and more noise, as the ice opens up
- Oil and gas exploration in its feeding grounds
- Entanglement in fishing gear
One real thing
The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth, and the bowhead's ice goes with it. Walk, bike or bus when you can, and ask the grown-ups where your home's electricity comes from.
More ways to help