Federal scientists plan to evaluate the number of bowhead whales Alaska Eskimos can harvest in future annual subsistence hunts. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) will over coming months conduct an environmental review of the bowhead harvest quota for Native hunters from 11 Arctic Alaska communities.

Currently, Alaska Natives are allowed to strike no more than 75 bowhead whales for harvest, estimated to be less than 1 percent of the Western Arctic bowhead whale population. The environmental review will be made public next April; after that, the public will be invited to comment on the results. Bowhead whale hunt quotas are administered for NOAA by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission under federal treaty. NMFS will survey the bowhead whale population to provide an Environmental Impact Statement effective for four years, from 2013-2017, and will update federal subsistence harvest regulations. The current EIS expires next year.

Under the authority of the International Whaling Commission, NOAA Fisheries grants a quota of bowhead whale for subsistence hunts to the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, based on analysis in the EIS. The AEWC then directly manages the subsistence hunts.

For over 2,000 years, Eskimos have hunted bowhead whales as they migrate along the coastline of Alaska in the spring and fall. Native subsistence hunters from 11 northern Alaskan communities take less than one-percent of the stock of bowhead whales per year.