The Daily Bucket is a regular feature of the Backyard Science group on Daily Kos. The purpose of the bucket is the posting of observations of the natural world. Plants flowering, leaves falling, meteors showering, insects emerging, fungi fruiting, storms gathering, road kill decomposing, and rocks just sitting there; all are worthy contributions to the bucket. Please post anything you see and find interesting from the natural world in the comments. No drop is too small for the bucket. Also please post, as close as is comfortable for you, where you made the observation.
This is a bit of an unusual bucket, especially for Thanksgiving. However, never fear, I will tie it in at the end. The image above is a portion of the jaw of Hubb’s Beaked Whale, Mesoplodon carlhubbsi.
The entire skull
This specimen is in the Beaty Biodiversity Museum at the University of British Columbia. Seeing it partially fulfills one item on my ‘bucket list’, which is to see one of these most mysterious of marine mammals. The beaked whales are the second largest family (Ziphiidae) of toothed whales containing about 20 species found throughout most of the world’s oceans. Most of them resemble giant dolphins, reaching lengths in the 15-20 foot range, although the very largest species reach lengths well over 30 feet making them longer than all other toothed whales except the Sperm Whale.
So how come such a diverse and large group of marine mammals is so little known? After all, most people have never seen a blue whale, but everyone has heard of them.
Blue Whale skeleton (in part) at the Beaty Museum
Unlike blue whales most of the beaked whales, with the exception of the Northern Bottlenose Whale, have never been the subject of sustained commercial hunting. They are deep diving whales that mostly rest when they are at the surface. As a result they are difficult to spot at sea and not much is known about their behavior, ecology, or population sizes. Members of the genus Mesoplodon, about two thirds of the species in the family, are particularly little known and enigmatic. Females are toothless and adult males have a single pair of teeth. The teeth appear to function in sexual competition and the shape of the teeth varies across species leading to names such as strap-toothed whale, spade-toothed whale, and gingko-toothed whale. At least a couple of species appear to have never been (at least knowingly) seen alive and are only known from strandings. Hubb’s Beaked Whale, the species shown here, was only described in 1963 and there appear to be 32 specimens in museums worldwide according the Smithsonian database. A new species of Mesoplodon was described just last year.
Beak of the whale, showing the mostly toothless condition
OK, now to the Thanksgiving tie in. I am thankful that sufficient mystery still exists in the world to keep us seeking for answers about magnificent organisms like beaked whales. I am thankful that our planet still remains in good enough shape to support these species. However, despite the fact that beaked whales have experienced relatively little human exploitation, they do appear to be suffering from our activities. Intense sonar associated with naval activities and oil exploration has been linked to strandings. Ingestion of plastic and reduction of food species from human fishing are also likely to affect these species. In a way, they are an unusual example of a very usual plight of life on this planet. Species of which we are barely aware that we are in danger of exterminating as a side effect of our activities.
If you ever find yourself in Vancouver, I’d recommend visiting the Beaty Museum. It is very unusual in design. The displays are all incorporated into the housing for the museum’s research collection. So you walk through an environment that is very much like the ‘behind the scenes’ part of a museum, endless aisles of drawers and cabinets. But in this case there are displays built into them.
"Spotlight on Green News & Views" is posted every Saturday at 5:00 pm Pacific Time and Wednesday at 3:30 on the Daily Kos front page. It's a great way to catch up on diaries you might have missed. Be sure to recommend and comment in the diary.