Previously Unknown Beaked Whale Species Spotted off Mexico

A team of scientists searching for a rare species of whale instead found a species of whale they say has never been recorded.

Written byMax Kozlov

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ABOVE: Two of three whales that belong to a suspected new species swim alongside a research vessel off the coast of Mexico’s San Benito Islands.
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Astrange noise recorded in 2018 in the depths of the Pacific Ocean near Mexico’s San Benito Islands may belong to a species of beaked whale that hasn’t been documented before, according to a team of scientists working with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

“We saw something new. Something that was not expected in this area, something that doesn’t match, either visually or acoustically, anything that is known to exist,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration senior scientist Jay Barlow, who was a member of the team that discovered the whales, says in a statement released by Sea Shepherd on December 8.

Beaked whales produce loud echolocation clicks to navigate and forage, but the clicks that the team heard had an unusual acoustic profile: they peaked ...

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Meet the Author

Max Kozlov
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Max is a science journalist from Boston. Though he studied cognitive neuroscience, he now prefers to write about brains rather than research them. Prior to writing for The Scientist as an editorial intern in late 2020 and early 2021, Max worked at the Museum of Science in Boston, where his favorite part of the job was dressing in a giant bee costume and teaching children about honeybees. He was also a AAAS Mass Media Fellow, where he worked as a science reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Read more of his work at www.maxkozlov.com.
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