Family Ziphiidae

FIRST UNDERWATER FOOTAGE OF TRUE’S BEAKED WHALES

For the first time, researchers recorded the elusive True’s beaked whale (Mesoplodon mirus) in waters around the Azores and the Canary Islands (macaronesian ecoregion). This group was formed by three adult or sub-adult whales. Social behavior of this species is still unknown but the group seemed to dive in a coordinated manner, as has been observed in other species of beaked whales. Scientists took DNA samples, confirmating the occurrence of the True’s beaked whale at the southern limit of its distribution recorded in the northeast Atlantic, also they identified a new variety of coloration. The study is published in the journal PeerJ.

The recording of several observations of this species in deep but relatively coastal waters off the Azores and the Canary Islands suggests that these archipelagos may be unique locations to study the behaviour of the enigmatic True’s beaked whale.

- True’s beaked whale observed off Pico showing a pale blaze on the melon. Photo by Petra Szlama

Its distribution in the northern hemisphere is thought to be restricted to the temperate of the North Atlantic, while a few stranding records from the southern hemisphere, suggesting its absent in the tropics. No population estimates have been established on this species, but it is believed to be one of the rarest species of cetacean.

Beaked whales are one of the least known groups of mammals because of their deep-sea habitat. Only three to four of the 22 species are reasonably well-known. These cetaceans are extreme divers, Cuvier’s beaked whales has  the deepest foraging dive recorded with 137.5 minutes at 2,992 m.

For decades, Japanese fishermen have told stories about the existence of a dark, rare beaked whale that they called karasu — the “raven.”

But now, scientists say they have genetic proof to back up these tales. Long mistaken for its relative, the Baird’s beaked whale, scientists say it represents an entirely new species.

“There have been a lot of people out there surveying whales for a long time and never come across this in scientific research,” Phillip Morin, research molecular geneticist at the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center, tells The Two-Way. “So it is a huge thing to discover this; it’s kind of baffling that we haven’t seen it before.” The team’s research was published Tuesday in Marine Mammal Science.

Mysterious And Known As The ‘Raven’: Scientists Identify New Whale Species

Photo: In 2004 Reid Brewer of the University of Alaska Southeast measured an unusual beaked whale that turned up dead in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. A tissue sample from the carcass later showed that the whale was one of the newly identified species. Don Graves

Hands down the best mammal of the trip- A beaked whale! This big guy was logging in front of the cruise ship while we were crossing the Tasman sea, my mom spotted him when he was really far away and it seemed like he wasn’t going to move out of the way of the ship… but luckily he dove about fifty feet before the ship passed over him. I think he was probably sunning the fresh bite wound on his side (cookie-cutter shark?). I only got one blurry photo of his head (which showed a roundish snout lacking a long beak), but that coupled with his size (~20′ ish) and color pattern make me think he’s a male Cuvier’s beaked whale.

Beaked whales are my favorite group of ocean-faring mammals… but they’re also notoriously hard to find and I figured that I’d never see one in my lifetime… so I was super excited to get good looks at one!

SCIENTISTS LEARN TO TAG THE ELUSIVE BEAKED WHALE

Scientists know practically nothing about beaked whales, a family that makes up about a quarter of all cetacean species. Mostly, that’s because beaked whales live in the places humans can’t easily reach—they evolved to spend long periods of time foraging in the deep ocean, only surfacing for minutes at a time. Up until recently, the only way scientists could study beaked whales was if one washed up dead on a beach. So marine biologists have a conundrum: How do they study these elusive, remote animals without killing them? “With great patience,” says marine biologist Erin Falcone. She and her team at the Cascadia Research Collective in Olympia, Washington have spent the past decade developing a suite of hardy tech to spy on these animals. Their system is organized around the 90 seconds or so a beaked whale spends at the surface. “They come up, they take a few breaths, they’re done, they’re gone,” Falcone says. So the Cascadia lab partners with a naval submarine training range off the coast of San Diego, which has a field of underwater microphones. When their naval partners hear the telltale clicks of a foraging beaked whale, they radio Falcone and her team, who head out and wait for the whale to surface. “We spend a great deal of time staring out at the empty ocean, hoping we’re close enough to go over and place tags on them,” she says. If they’re lucky, a whale will surface in prime position for them to hit it with a tag, a $5,000 piece of technology no bigger than a golf ball. Designed specifically for deep-diving Cuvier’s beaked whales, the tag contains a depth sensor, a satellite transmitter, a saltwater switch, and a long-lived battery. It also has two titanium darts that cling to the whale’s fin during deep dives, but eventually fall out so the whale isn’t wounded forever. Each tag is tested at a land range for ballistics, since they need to fly true when scientists shoot them out of an air rifle on the choppy seas. Once the tag is in, the scientists wait for the data to come through. For the next few months, the tag reports the animal’s goings-on back to the scientists. Every time the whale surfaces, the tag dumps data—information about location, trajectory, and depth of each dive—to a network of satellites or the lab’s shoreside data station. This process yields great fine-grained data, but it’s also complicated and full of risks. So Simone Baumann-Pickering, a biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, uses a different tactic: tracking and analyzing the high-pitched clicks the whales make when they hunt. She and her team drop large cubic meter-sized instruments to record the sounds on the ocean floor, everything from the low-frequency hum of baleen whales to passing ships to the ambient rush of water. Then, after the data come back, she reverse-engineers the soundtrack and picks out the whales’ high-pitched echolocation. From that data, Baumann-Pickering can deduce how many animals there are, how well the population is doing, how water temperature affects numbers, and how people-generated noise impacts the whales’ behavior. And that’s important, because Navy sonar can strand and kill beaked whales. That’s ironically what attracted biologists’ attention to the animals in the first place, but ultimately, all this roundabout data-collecting is to help keep the whales swimming in their remote, deep-ocean homes ( source )

Beaked whales by Uko Gorter.

I think a lot of us forget just how big beaked whales can be…

This is a northern bottlenose whale, killed by Norwegian whalers.

Photo taken from The Sierra Club Handbook of Whales and Dolphins.

Gray’s Beaked Whale and Orca. Photo by Dave & Fiona Harvey.

"A rare moment with beaked whales" by Diederik Huisman

A Hawaiian Cuvier’s beaked whale with a totally missing rostrum—it’s not known whether this deformity is congenital or from an injury.

Either way, it doesn’t seem to affect her very much as she’s been seen multiple times and was even spotted in 2012 with a calf.

Photo and info via Robin Baird

An orca and a Gray’s Beaked Whale together, photo by Keith Lightbody.

SCARS ON WHALE REVEALS SOCIAL SECRETS

Perrin’s Beaked Whale (Mesoplodon perrini)

Loren Coleman

Blaineville’s Beaked Whale (by Photography_by_Leighton)