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Good cetacean news

By jlynch on December 22, 2006.

 

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With the recent bad news about the vaquita and the Yantzee river dolphin, it is good to have some positive news to report about cetaceans. This press release, from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, reports
that four elusive Arnoux's Beaked Whales (Berardius arnuxii) have been spotted. As the release notes:

The Arnoux's Beaked Whales is one of the least known species of the Beaked Whales family (Ziphidae), itself poorly known in general. Arnoux's is one of the biggest species amongst beaked whales. The ones observed were probably 9 metre long. These deep-sea feeding whales are particularly sensitive to underwater acoustic disturbances. The pictures showed a whole array of scars on their skin, which are already under investigation. Some of these scars could have been inflicted by orcas, their potential predators,
or by squids, their most common preys, as proposed by Elaina Jorgensen one of our cephalopod specialist onboard. Other scars could be caused by cookie-cutter sharks, which would imply big migration between the subtropical waters where these sharks are found and the ice-edge (64°06 S) where they were observed.

Mammals that prey on squid ... eh PZ? :)

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