Scientists aboard the Pacific Storm research vessel off the coast of Baja California in Mexico were finishing their morning coffee when a call came from the bridge that would end a five year search for one of the planet’s most elusive creatures. After firing a small arrow from a modified crossbow to collect a pencil eraser sized chunk of whale skin, the entire boat erupted in cheers as they realized they had just seen something never before witnessed in the wild: a ginkgo toothed beaked whale. The discovery nearly didn’t happen when an opportunistic albatross swept in and started pecking at the precious piece of evidence floating on the water’s surface, forcing panicked scientists to throw their breakfast bread rolls to distract the thieving bird before they could scoop up the arrow.
Lead researcher Elizabeth Henderson from the US military’s Naval Information Warfare Center described the indescribable feeling of accomplishment after working toward this moment for so long, tracking a group of whales producing a distinctive call tagged as BW43 that they initially thought belonged to a different species. Beaked whales are the deepest diving mammals on Earth, spending most of their lives in the oceans and only surfacing for air a few minutes at a time, usually far from coastlines, making them notoriously shy and easily frightened when boats approach. Finding ginkgo toothed beaked whales near Mexico was a huge surprise since stranding records had often found them washed up on the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean near Japan, but acoustic data now confirms these animals probably live year round off the shores of California and northern Baja California. Learning where these whales live is crucial because they’re especially sensitive to military sonars that interfere with their foraging and can cause them to ascend too fast, suffering fatal decompression injuries, proving that sometimes the hardest discoveries to make are the ones that matter most for protecting the largest least known animals left on the planet.
