Extremely Rare Beaked Whale Species Stranded in Magdalen Islands

These species can be identified either by their prominent skull in the case of the northern bottlenose whale, or the protruding teeth reminiscent of a wild boar in the Sowerby’s beaked whale. The two whales on the Magdalen Island beach did not show either of these characteristics.

In addition to the Sowerby’s beaked whale, there are three other species of beaked whales that frequent the waters of the northwest Atlantic: Gervais’s beaked whale, Blainville’s beaked whale, and True’s beaked whale. Differentiating species is a challenge: shape, size, rostrum length, position of the teeth and, ultimately, genetics must be observed.

The adult found on the beach at Pointe-aux-Loups was in a very good state of conservation. After careful analysis of the photos, Canadian researchers firmly believe that they might be True’s beaked whales. According to literature as well as previous observations, this species is recognized by its round melon (forehead), its relatively short beak and its colour pattern which consists of a medium shade of gray on the back and light gray on the belly. A dark area is also visible around the eye. They measure 2.3 m at birth and the maximum length recorded for an adult is 5.3 m.

There are at least 22 species of beaked whales in the family Ziphiidae, many of which have only recently been described. These whales live far from shore, rarely linger at the surface and dive deep – they hold diving records (article in French) of over two hours, at depths of up to 3,000 m – to feed on their favourite prey, including squid and groundfish.

The True’s beaked whale is often regarded as the most mysterious and poorly understood species in its large family. Long considered a species confined to the Northern Hemisphere, we now know that there are various populations in the Southern Hemisphere.

The True’s, a.k.a. “wonderful”, beaked whale was first described in 1913 by Frederick True based on an adult female found beached in North Carolina. The first sighting of a live specimen occurred 82 years later, in 1995,” says Jack Lawson, a Newfoundland-based marine mammal research scientist for Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

Dr. Lawson performed a necropsy on an adult female that had stranded in Newfoundland in February 2015. To his knowledge, no True’s beaked whale had never been sighted north of Nova Scotia.

In March 2017, researchers from Scotland’s University of St. Andrews made headlines with a video showing two True’s beaked whales swimming off the coast of the Azores. Multiple articles appeared in the media with titles such as “First-ever underwater video of the elusive True’s beaked whale”.

Video broadcast by journal PeerJ (Credit: Roland Edler):