At 50 tons, the bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) is one of the heaviest whales and one of the heaviest animals that have ever existed. The bowhead whale can grow up to 18 m long and is relatively shorter and thicker than other whales in the same weight class.
The bowhead whale, along with the humpback whale, blue whale and fin whale, is one of the few baleen whales that uses song to communicate with other species. The bowhead whale's song is sophisticated and includes many different styles of sounds over a very wide range of frequencies.
The bowhead whale is the only baleen whale that spends its entire life in Arctic waters. It has a circumpolar distribution in the Arctic. In the North Atlantic, it is found west of Greenland in the Davis Strait and in Baffin Bay, and east of Greenland in the Greenland Sea and around Svalbard. Bowhead whales are also found in the Pacific Ocean in the Sea of Okhotsk and off northeastern Russia, Alaska, and northwestern Canada.
