Minke whales are distributed across both coastal and offshore waters within their range. They are known to migrate, but winter locations are not well understood. During the summer, when they occupy their northern feeding grounds, there is evidence for sexual segregation within the North Atlantic with females occupying waters at higher latitudes to the west of Greenland and males occupying waters further south to the east of Greenland (Laidre et al. 2009).
Minke whales in the North Atlantic feed on fish and krill, the species composition of their diet depends on location and the interannual variability in prey availability. Fish prey species include sandeel (Ammodytidae), caplin (Mallotus villosus), saithe (Pollachius virens), cluipids, and gadoids (Haug et al. 1996, Neve 2000, Pierce et al. 2004). Isotopic analyses have indicated that minke whales feed primarily on fish species during the year but switching to krill during spring blooms (Eerkes‐Medrano et al. 2021). Body condition of minke whales in the Barents Sea correlated with the availability for immature herring (Clupea harengus) with minke whales being in better condition during periods with higher immature herring abundance (Haug et al. 2002).

Minke whales are globally distributed across nearly all latitudes (80°N to 65°S) and oceanic basins. Three subspecies of Common Minke Whales have been proposed: Balaenoptera acutorostrata acutorostrata in the North Atlantic, B. a. scammoni in the North Pacific and the Dwarf Minke Whale (currently unnamed) in the southern hemisphere. Of these subspecies, only B. a. acutorostrata occurs in European waters.

Within European waters, Common Mike Whales are abundant during summer and autumn from the Barents and Greenland Seas in the north to as far south as the central North Sea and Irish Seas. Little is known about their wintering grounds or their migratory routes. However, they are identified year-round in the Canary Islands (Van Waerebeek et al. 1999) and the Azores (Visser et al. 2011, Silva et al. 2014). There are few records of Common Minke Whales off Spain and Portugal and in the Mediterranean, and there is a single record of the species in the Black Sea (Aguilar et al. 1983, Van Waerebeek et al. 1999, Reeves and Notarbartolo di Sciara 2006).

Minke whales are included in the international moratorium of whaling by IWC members with the exception of Norway, Iceland, and the Russian federation. Minke whales are included in Appendix I of CITES, with the exception of the West Greenland population which is included in Appendix II.