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Unique morphological and acoustic characteristics of beaked whales (Mesoplodon sp.) off the west coast of Baja California, Mexico



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  • Journal Title:
    Marine Mammal Science
  • Personal Author:
  • NOAA Program & Office:
  • Description:
    Three new species of beaked whales (Ziphiidae) have been described in the past three decades: the pygmy beaked whale (Mesoplodon peruvianus; Reyes et al. 1991), Perrin's beaked whale (Mesoplodon perrini; Dalebout et al. 2002), and Sato's beaked whale (Berardius minimus; Yamada et al. 2019). Perrin's beaked whale has never been identified alive and was discovered accidentally through genetic analysis of stranded whales in California that had been misidentified as Hector's beaked whale (Mesoplodon hectori; Dalebout et al. 2002). However, before they were formally described, field naturalists had identified the pygmy beaked whale as a new species and given it the interim name Mesoplodon sp. A (Pitman et al., 1987; Pitman & Lynn, 2001). Sato's beaked whale was known to whalers and given the colloquial name kuro-tsuchi or black Baird's beaked whale before its existence was known to science. Based on this recent history, more beaked whale species may be awaiting discovery and are likely to be recognized in the field before they are formally described. Here we present photographic and acoustic features of an unidentified Mesoplodon seen off the west coast of Baja California, Mexico, that are distinct from any of the mesoplodonts known to regularly occur in the northeast Pacific. These observations may therefore represent the first record of a new taxa.
  • Keywords:
  • Source:
    Marine Mammal Science, 38( 1), 383– 390
  • DOI:
  • Document Type:
    Journal Article
  • Place as Subject:
    California
  • Rights Information:
    Public Domain
  • Compliance:
    Submitted
  • Main Document Checksum:
    urn:sha256:a3959f10e12fd048ffc7d325d89e71ddab95157918b7a1a66fdf12508f85f165
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  • File Type:
    Filetype[PDF - 1.18 MB ]
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