Video notes:
These whales have never been seen alive. We know these whales they exist. We’ve found them washed up on beaches. In some cases, we have audio recordings of their vocalizations and echolocation clicks. But they’ve never been observed in the wild...
00:00 - Beaked Whales
01:23 - Beaked Whale Facts
03:51 - The World's Rarest Whale
06:22 - Andrew's Beaked Whale
07:56 - Scientists Find Rare Tusked Whale Alive For The First Time
10:02 - The Whale Known Only By The Sound Of It's Voice
They are Andrews’ beaked whale, Perrin’s beaked whale, and the Spade-toothed whale. Three members of the beaked whale family, widely considered to be the least understood and most cryptic group of mammals in the world. 24 species of beaked whales are currently recognized and in the last five years alone… two new species were described for the first time ever. And there might be others that are still waiting to be discovered.
Like the Cross Seamount beaked whale, “The whale that’s known only by the sound of its voice.” It’s a potentially new species of beaked whale that we’ve heard and recorded, but never seen. And no specimen has ever washed ashore or stranded.
There are good reasons we never see these mysterious animals. Beaked whales live in deep offshore waters, far from the coast. And they spend most of their lives down near the abyssal plain. Far deeper than sperm whales or elephant seals can dive. And they do it while holding their breath for almost 4 hours.
Cuvier’s beaked whale holds the record as the deepest-diving mammal on Earth, descending to depths exceeding 3,000 meters or 10,000 feet. That’s far deeper than sperm whales have ever been recorded. Somehow, beaked whales only need a few minutes to recuperate at the surface before heading back down to the abyssal plain.
Type D Killer Whale Discovery and Sampling
Type D Killer Whale Research Team 2019
taken under Chilean Sub-Secretary of Fisheries and Aquaculture
Research Permit, Res. Ex. 1181 (31 May 2017) and Res. Ex. 4402 (18 Dec 2018)