[7][8] The oldest recorded age, determined by counting annual growth layers from a tooth in a whaled specimen was 37.

[15][10] Northern bottlenose feed mainly on deep water squid, primarily Gonatus sp., and bottom fish, such as Greenland halibut.

[17] A small percentage of northern bottlenose whales have also been observed feeding on redfish, rabbitfish, spiny dogfish, and skate.

[10][18] "The Gully", a large submarine canyon east of Nova Scotia, is the home of the "Scotian Shelf" population of 164 whales, currently listed under Canada's Species at Risk Act as endangered.

[19] In 1976 the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission identified a single population across the North Atlantic.

In 2011 COSEWIC determined that there are two populations off eastern Canada (Scotian Shelf and Labrador-Davis Strait Designated Units), which recent studies have confirmed are genetically distinct from each other.

Canada; Faroe Islands; France; Germany; Greenland; Iceland; Ireland; Netherlands; Norway; Portugal; Spain; Svalbard and Jan Mayen; Sweden; United Kingdom; United States Denmark; Mauritania; Morocco; Russian Federation; Western Sahara On 20 January 2006, a female northern bottlenose whale was spotted in Central London in the River Thames.

[19] Between 1850 and 1973, commercial hunting of the species, focused on populations found off Norway, Iceland, Greenland and Labrador, greatly reduced their numbers across their range.

Current conservation concerns include threats from human activities such as disturbance related to offshore oil and gas developments and naval sonar, as well as entanglement in fishing gear, pollution, ingestion of plastic and ecosystem shifts related to climate change.

[20] Due to their low genetic diversity and slow reproductive rate, recovery of their populations may be vulnerable to human stressors and stochastic events.