Because the number of species or subspecies is still unresolved, and because the different forms are not readily distinguishable at sea, considerable uncertainty remains with regard to the geographic range of each form.

Ordinary Bryde’s whales
“Ordinary” large-type Bryde’s whales occur in the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans between about 40°N and 40°S or in waters warmer than 16.3°C (Kato 2002). Migration to equatorial waters in winter is documented for the southeast Atlantic population (Best 1996) and for the northwest Pacific population (Kishiro 1996). Migration patterns of other populations are poorly known

They are relatively common in the western North Pacific, mainly north of 20°N in summer and south of 20°N in winter. In the eastern North Pacific, they do not venture north of southern California (US), but there appears to be a resident population in the northern Gulf of California (Urbán and Flores 1996), and they occur throughout the eastern tropical Pacific (Wade and Gerrodette 1993). They occur throughout the tropical Pacific, and across the South Pacific down to about 35°S, but with shifts in distributions between seasons (Miyashita et al. 1995). They occur off the coasts of Peru and Ecuador but not during July to September (Valdivia et al. 1981), and off Chile in an upwelling area between 35°-37°S (Gallardo et al. 1983). In the southwestern Pacific, their distribution extends as far south as the North Island of New Zealand (Thompson et al. 2002).

Bryde’s whales occur throughout the Indian Ocean north of about 35°S. Those in the southern Indian Ocean appear to be large-type animals (Ohsumi 1980b), as are the Bryde’s whales of the northwest Indian Ocean, which were taken illegally by Soviet whaling fleets in the 1960s (Mikhalev 1997), and those around the Maldives (Anderson 2005).

In the South Atlantic, there is a population that summers off the western coast of southern Africa, and migrates to West African equatorial waters in winter (Best 2001). Elsewhere in the Atlantic the distribution of Bryde’s whales is not well known. The Bryde’s whale appears to occur year-round throughout Brazilian waters (Zerbini et al. 1997). Bryde’s whales occur in the Gulf of Mexico (Mullin and Fulling 2004) and throughout the wider Caribbean (Ward et al. 2001). They do not occur in the Mediterranean (Reeves and Notabartolo di Sciara 2006). They have been recorded as far north as Cape Hatteras in the northwest Atlantic (Rice 1998).

East China Sea
Bryde’s whales which occur off southern and southwestern Japan are now considered to belong to an East China Sea population, having earlier been thought to be a local resident population (Kato and Kishiro 1999). Phylogenetic analyses suggest that they are a subspecies of Bryde’s whales (Yoshida and Kato 1999) or belong to the separate species B. edeni (Sasaki et al. 2006).

South African inshore form
There is a resident inshore population of Bryde’s whales off South Africa which shows some morphological differences from ordinary Bryde’s whales (Best 1977, 2001). Its main distribution is between Cape Recife and Saldanha Bay (Best 2001). It may simply be a local form of ordinary Bryde’s whale, but its taxonomic status has yet to be investigated genetically.

Other small forms
Small-type “Bryde’s” whales that appear to be mature at small sizes have been found in various Asian waters and off Australia.

The B. edeni holotype (Anderson 1879) was found in the Gulf of Martaban, Andaman Sea. Further specimens were found on the Bay of Bengal coast of Myanmar (Anderson 1879) and in Bangladesh (Andrews 1918). The Junge (1950) specimen, used in recent studies as the genetic representative of B. edeni, is from Sugi Island, Sumatra (Indonesia) (close to Singapore).

A stranding from Hong Kong (China) and a rescued river-trapped individual in eastern Australian (Priddel and Wheeler 1998) have been found to be closely related phylogenetically to the “B. edeni” clade represented by the Junge (1950) specimen and the southwestern Japan whales (Sasaki et al. 2006, LeDuc and Dizon 2002).

Phylogenetic analyses reveal that at least some of the small “Bryde’s whales” taken in the Philippines artisanal fisheries (Perrin et al. 1996) were in fact B. omurai (Sasaki et al. 2006, LeDuc and Dizon 2002).

The identity of “Bryde’s whales” maturing at a small size (11-12 m) caught off western Australia (Bannister 1964) is unclear. They may be a local form, or related to small forms found elsewhere, or they may even have been B. omurai.

The identity of eight small “Bryde’s whales” stranded in Thai waters (Andersen and Kinze 1993) is also unclear.