Humpback whale sightings around New Zealand 1970-1999

Humpback whales were almost taken to extinction by intensive whaling activities during the past century. In Area V, an original population of approximately 10 000 humpbacks at the beginning of the century had been reduced to less than 5%, or estimated 250-500 whales of the original population(Chittleborough 1965). Humpbacks were given total protection from commercial whaling by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 1966 and presently have an International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) status of Vulnerable (Donoghue 1994). Although protected, subsistence hunting of humpbacks continued in Tonga until 1979 when whaling was prohibited by Royal Decree; and in Antarctica by illegal Russian whaling of approximately 47 000 humpbacks, which continued until the 1980s (Donoghue 1994,Yablokov 1994).
While some humpback whale populations have been widely studied, others including the population that migrates along the New Zealand coast are little known since the cessation of commercial whaling. Following the closure of Tory Channel whaling station in 1964, humpbacks have rarely been sighted in New Zealand waters (Helweg et al. 1999), suggesting that this migratory population has not shown any significant recovery, although Cawthorn (1997) reported an apparent increase in New Zealand waters. Due to the differences in population structure between areas, knowledge derived from one ocean or population cannot easily be applied to others.
This dataset represents a compilation of all sightings of humpback whales around New Zealand within the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).