Possibly, vagrants from this population occasionally reach into Asian nations such as off Japan or the Korean Peninsula (although this record might be of a right whale). First documented report of the species in Japanese waters was of a strayed infant () caught in Osaka Bay on 23 June 1969, and the first living sighting was of a juvenile around Shiretoko Peninsula (the southernmost of ice floe range in the Northern Hemisphere) on 21 to 23 June 2015. Fossils have been excavated on Hokkaido, but it is unclear whether or not northern coasts of Japan once had been included in seasonal or occasional migration ranges.