Commission). We are very grateful to Andrew A. Scha ner for excellent research assistance. We thank Dr. Thomas F. Albert, Craig George and other scientists and personnel from the Borough's Department of Wildlife Management, the many other researchers with whom we have worked, most of whose names appear on papers in our reference list, the census crew, and the Eskimo hunters of the Borough, for their contributions to our understanding of bowhead whales and the census. We are also grateful to Geof Givens for useful discussions, and to Doug Butterworth and Andre Punt Estimating the population size and rate of increase of bowhead whales, Balaena mysticetus, is important because bowheads were the rst species of great whale for which commercial whaling stopped and so their status indicates the recovery prospects of other great whales, and also because this information is used by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to set the aboriginal subsistence whaling quota for Alaskan Eskimos. We describe the 1993 visual and acoustic census o Point Barrow, Alaska, which provides the best data available for estimating these quantities. We outline the de nitive version of two statistical methods for estimating the population, the generalized removal method and the Bayes empirical Bayes

this paper about the collective opinion and behavior of the IWC and its subcommittees are entirely the author's own, based on membership in the US delegation to the IWC Scientific Committee since 1992. They do not reflect official IWC policy or opinion.

to conduct a marine geophysical (deep seismic) survey program during open-water season on various U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS) Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) lease blocks in the Chukchi and Mid and Eastern Beaufort Seas. SOI and WesternGeco request an Incidental Harassment Authorization (IHA) pursuant to Section 101 (a) (5) (D) of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), 16 U.S.C. § 1371 (a) (5), to allow non-lethal takes of whales and seals incidental to offshore geophysical seismic operations. The only type of incidental taking sought in this application is takes by noise harassment stemming from WesternGeco’s deep seismic survey vessel M/V Gilivar, the M/V Kilabuk (or ice-class seismic chase vessel of similar characteristics). The M/V Kilabuk will serve as a resupply, fueling and chase vessel and is capable of assisting in ice management operations but will not deploy seismic acquisition gear. The site clearance and shallow hazards surveys will be conducted by the M/V Henry Christoffersen, the same vessel used during SOI’s 2006 site clearance and shallow hazard surveys. SOI will contract a Sikorsky S-61 helicopter to provide emergency rescue/evacuation and search