Caught on film for the first time: One of the world’s rarest whales

Washington Post ^ | March 7, 2017 | Sarah Kaplan

[C19fan]

Natacha Aguilar de Soto has studied beaked whales for 15 years. She has spent dozens of months at sea, floating above the deepest parts of the ocean, straining her eyes and ears to detect whatever might be moving in the fathoms below.

She rarely finds anything. Beaked whales — a family of 22 cetacean species characterized by dolphinlike noses and missile-shaped bodies — are some of the most elusive animals on Earth. They dive deeper and longer than any other marine mammal and spend an estimated 92 percent of their lives far beneath the ocean surface. One species, the True's beaked whale, is so rare that only a handful of people have ever seen it alive.

[C19fan]

Cool! Beaked whales are very hard to find because they live in the middle of the ocean and dive deep to get their food. I believe some of them grow to 50 feet.

[DaxtonBrown]

They taste good too!
(just kidding)

[Delta 21]

Probably conservatives. Just wanna be left the hell alone.

[Gamecock]

True's beaked whale

What a fish!

[freedumb2003]

Very cool:

[The Sons of Liberty]

A closer look at one that was beached:

[nevergore]

"“We don’t know how large the populations of True's beaked whale or any other species are,” said Aguilar de Soto. “The populations could decline and we would never know.”"

Translation: " We won't even know when to apply for grants to study and save them! How can we justify our existence!?!"

[Jolla]

No, the Washington Post would not write such; the head looks like a dolphin

[PLMerite]

"They dive deeper and longer than any other marine mammal and spend an estimated 92 percent of their lives far beneath the ocean surface. "

They've got an app for that!

[raybbr]

They dive deeper and longer than any other marine mammal and spend an estimated 92 percent of their lives far beneath the ocean surface. One species, the True's beaked whale, is so rare that only a handful of people have ever seen it alive.

They have all the info on a mammal that nobody's ever really seen? How is that?

[Jolla]

You forgot the /s

It is not a fish

[C19fan]

Most of the information is from carcasses that come ashore and the rare times some of these animals have been tagged.

[xp38]

Personally I think Narwhals are cooler looking.

[Faith65]

Thanks!

[jjotto]

Whales get stranded as well as getting caught in fishing nets. Plenty of examples of the various species of beaked whales have been examined up close.

[raybbr]

Whales get stranded as well as getting caught in fishing nets. Plenty of examples of the various species of beaked whales have been examined up close.

Catching a fish in a net doesn't tell you how long they stay under and how deep they can dive.

[manna]

Thanks!

[jjotto]

Some of them have been satellite tagged.

http://www.cascadiaresearch.org/Hawaii/beakedwhales.htm

[C19fan]

The contents of the stomach can tell you what the animal eats. That indicates how deep the animal has to dive to get its food. For example, when people found beeks of Giant Squids in the stomach of Sperm Whales that indicated the whale had to be a deep diver to get down to the depth where the Giant Squid lives.

[choirboy]

They examine their black box - all kinds of info there.