Beaked whale3/30/2023 ![]() ![]() Holser and other island residents measured the whale. "The jaw structure and the shape of the melon were not quite right, either.” And this whale, while clearly an adult, was just two-thirds the size of full-grown Baird’s beaked whales. ![]() "This dorsal fin was larger, further aft, and had more curvature than that of a Baird's beaked whale," says independent ecologist Michelle Ridgway, who arrived on the island days later. She consulted a colleague's cetacean identification book and sent pictures to other experts in Alaska. But later, as tides and currents revealed more of the animal, Holser realized she didn't recognize it at all. George, a 35-square-mile (91-square-kilometer) island inhabited by 100 people, frequented by hundreds of thousands of seals, and visited by 2.5 million birds, pointed out the dead whale in Zapadni Bay to former seal researcher Karin Holser, she thought it was a Baird's beaked whale. In part that’s because they spend so much time feeding and exploring vast, deep canyons far from shore. While beaked whales are still hunted in Japan, little about them is known. They travel in large groups, may dive 3,000 feet (914 meters), and can be underwater for an hour. The largest of those, Baird's beaked whales, also called giant bottlenose whales, can reach 35 to 40 feet (10.7 to 12 meters) and weigh more than 24,000 pounds (10,900 kilograms). Of the 88 recognized living cetacean species, including orcas and humpbacks, bottlenose dolphins and Dall's porpoises, 22 are beaked whales. The discovery also raises new questions about how well humans are understanding the threats posed by marine activities, from energy exploration to sonar use, given that so few people even knew such a creature existed. "It sends a clear message about how little we know about what is in the ocean around us." "It boggles my mind to think that a large, very different-looking whale has gone unnoticed by the scientific community for so long," Pitman says. But at a time when the diversity of marine mammals is shrinking-the Yangtze River dolphin is now functionally extinct and Mexico’s vaquita porpoise is dangerously close-Pitman calls the discovery "heartening." He is not among the 16 co-authors on Morin's paper. Robert Pitman serves on a taxonomy committee for the Society for Marine Mammalogy, which publishes an annual list of all recognized marine mammal species. "It's just so exciting to think that in 2016 we're still discovering things in our world-even mammals that are more than 20 feet long," Morin says. The differences, in fact, are so dramatic that the animal has to be something else, they say. The scientists conclude in their study published in Marine Mammal Science that this type of whale, which has not yet been named, is nearly as far removed genetically from the Northern Hemisphere's Baird's beaked whales as it is from its closest known relative, Arnoux's beaked whales, which swim in the Antarctic Ocean. They even tracked down a skeleton hanging from the ceiling in a high school gymnasium in the Aleutian Islands. They studied skulls and beaks and analyzed records from whaling fleets in Japan. George carcass, took bone powder from old museum specimens, and reviewed DNA tests of whales from the Sea of Okhotsk. "If you think about it, on land, discovery of new species of large mammals is exceptionally rare. "It's a really big deal," says study co-author Paul Wade of NOAA's National Marine Mammal Laboratory. By Phil Morin NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center ![]()
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