Humpback whale

The humpback whale is a widely recognized species. Weighing around 40 tonnes, and measuring 14-17m. It is known for its habit of breaching (as above) which can be heard from miles away, and its incredibly complex song, which can last between 4 minutes and 33.

Their low sounds can be heard by whales 1000 miles away, and have been picked up by electronic sources far further away than that.

Whaling did horrific damage to this species, with their population falling to just 5000 in the 1960s. Thankfully, having been protected, the population is now around 135,000. Subspecies are more varied, with those in the northern hemisphere less secure. The least secure is the Arabian sea population, which is thought to be isolated for 70,000 years and there are only 80 that remain.

Threats to individual whales include entanglement in fishing gear, ocean noise and collisions with ships.

They are known to have hunting methods more complex than most baleen whales, including bubble netting which forces the fish into tighter shoals to then be taken in one mouthful.

Young are predated by orca in some parts of the world, and many carry scars from these encounters to the end of their lives.

Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises family tree

Cetaceans -Whales, porpoise and dolphins

Few people can avoid stopping to watch, if they spot cetaceans from a cliff. While the family is wide and varied, they are all pretty interesting. From some of the largest and most intelligent hunters such as killer whales to the largest animal on earth the blue whale.

Whale and dolphin watching tourism is worth a lot of money – this can be essential, as in many places the extra money helps a community survive.

I hope, overtime, to make this section of the website as large a list of places to view cetaceans and people who will help you in that quest.

As might perhaps be suspected, all of the mammal species which have returned permanently to the sea, and developed breathing holes located on their back (and therefore perfectly placed for taking quick breaths) are related.

So what is the most closely related living land mammal? Perhaps obviously, it is a species which spends much time in the water – the hippopotamus.

As with all of these pages, as we create pages for each individual species, they will be linked to the photo below.

Baleen whale - Humpback whale, by Fernando Flores

toothed whale -Orca in Alaska by Christopher Michael

So the baleen whales are split into three families, these are not large as there are only 16 species of baleen whales in the world. At the current time, there are roughly 1.1 million baleen whales in the worlds oceans

Below is a family tree of the group

Baleen Whales

Baleenideae – the rhight whales

The first living split is Baleenidae, this family is not huge. The north atlantic and north pacific are closest related, these species are closely related to the Southern pacific right whales. Their name is unfortunate – it is called right whale for 3 reasons, it swims slowly, floats when dead and carries a large amount of oil. This lead to all these species being hunted close to extinction.

North Atlantic right whale

North pacific right whale

Southern right whale

Bowhead whale

The other family is called Balaenopteroidea. Here species peel off slowly. I will list them in the order that they split.

The first split is the minke whale – of which there are 2 species, the common and southern minke whale, with the grey whale being the next most similar.

Brydes whale

Antarctic (Southern) Minke Whale

Grey whale and calf by NOAA Fisheries West Coast

Common minke whale

Sei whale mother and calf Christin Khan NOAA

The next are the humpback whale and the fin whale followed by the Blue whale.

Underwater humpback whale jd forester

fin whale by Amila Tennakoon

Blue whale, taken by Australian Antarctic program

The last group of whales are from a group called the Brydes whales complex

Sei whale mother and calf Christin Khan NOAA

This completes the list of baleen whales. The other branch of the Cetaceans is known as the toothed whales

Toothed Whale

.I am going to look at them in 3 groups, though the third is not particularly closely related to each other

Delphinoidea: This includes
- Monodontidaes – Belugas and narwhals

Beluga whale takein by Antony Stanley

Narwhal

- Phocoenidae – The family of Porpoises (7 species) such as harbour porpoises and Vanquita

bermeister porpoises

dalls porpoise Susan E Adams

Harbour Porpoise

Indo pacific (or east Asian) finless porpoise

Spectacled porpoise

Vaquita (Paula Olson NOAA)

Narrow Ridged finless porpoise (Yangtze finless porpoise by huangdan2060)

- Delphininidae – these are the oceanic dolphins – 37 species split into several subfamilies which we will deal with one by one.

Subfamily Delphininae – 15 species

Atlantic humpback dolphin Source- Al Khaleej Center website

Atlantic spotted dolphin photo credit NOAA southeast Fisheries science center

Australian Humpback dolphin photo credit Kerry Raymond

Clymene dophin photo credit for Keith Mullins and NOAA

Common_dolphin_noaa

Frazers dolphin

Guiana dolphin - photo credit Instituo Boto Cinza

Indian ocean humpback dolphin photo credit Mandy

Indo-pacific bottle nosed dolphin by Aude Steiner

Indo-pacific humpback dolphin photo credit user-takoradee

Pantropical spotted dolphin

Spinner dolphin by Alexander Vasenin

Stripped dolphin photo credit Scott Hill National Marine Mammal Laboratory

Tucuxi photo credit Archilder

Common bottle nose dolphin by NASA

Subfamily Globcephalinae 11 species

Australian snubfin dolphin

False killerwhale by Adam U

Long-finned pilot whale nu Gailhampshire

Rough toothed dolphin

Melon-headed Dolphin by Cyril di Bisceglie

Pygmy killer whales (Feresa attenuata) off of Guam

Irrawaddy Dophin

Short-finned pilot whale by Martina Nolte

Risso's dolphin by Citron

Subfamily incerta sedis (latin for “of uncertain placement” )6 species

Atlantic White-sided Dolphin

Dusky dolphin by AllenMoC

Hourglass dolphin by Lomvi2

Pacific white sided dolphin by NMFS southwest fisheries science center

Peales dolphin by fDrummondH

White beaked dolphin by Kees Camphuysen

Subfamily Lissodelphininae 6 sppecies

Black dolphins by Bobbyandck

Commerson's dolphin by Tonina1

Haviside dolphin by Joachim Huber

Hector dolphin by Avenue

Northern right whale dolphin credit NOAA NMFS

Southern right whale dolphin

Subfamily Orcininae

Orca by Robert Pittman NOAA

Inioidea : This includes 3 groups
- Iniidae (only 1 of 5 genus remains -Inea (4 species: Araguaian river dolphin, Bolivian river dolphin and Orinoco dolphin)

Amazon river dolphin by Oceancetaceen sometimes known as the Orinoco

Araguaian river dolphin by Rio Cicica

Bolivian river dolphin by Ramon and Suzanne Vargas

- Lipotidae: which contains only one species: the Baiji or Chinese river dolphin

Pontoporiidae: which contains one species

La plata dolpin

The next family is the beaked whales. There are 24 species, of which only 3-4 have been well studied. This is because they spend much of their time deep in the sea, it appears that each species does not have many members and they are incredibly reclusive in their habits.

One might ask how an air breathing animal can spend so much of its time deep in the ocean? Well the Curved beaked whale has had a dive timed at 138 minutes. More incredible, they only need around 2 minutes to catch their breathe before sinking back into the depths. This means that if required, they can spend just 20 minutes out of 24 hours at the surface – an incredible stunt.

There appear to be a great number of species that are extinct – these we will not list, but will mention each subfamily in passing.

Incertae sedis contains 5 extinct genus, Basal forms include 13 extinct genus

Subfamily Berardiinae contains 3 genus, 2 of which are extinct, but the third contains 3 living species (and one dead) .

Genus Beradius

Arnoux's beaked whale

Baird beaked whale

Sato beaked whale

Next we cover the Bottlenose whales

Northern Southern and Tropical

northern bottlenose whale

Southern bottlenose whale

Tropical bottlenose whale

Subfamily Ziphiinae contains 5 genus, 3 are extinct, but two have just one species in each

Genus Tasmacetus: Shepherds beaked whale Genus Ziphius: Cuviers beaked whale

Click on the image to see it in full

Shepherds beaked whale

Cuvier's beaked whale

The most populous genus Mesoplodon – mesoplodont whales

As you can see, many of the pictures are of dead whales, or skulls or diagrams, or even just text. This is because sightings of many species are so rare that they have never had a photo taken

Andrews' beaked whale

Blainville's beaked whale

deraniyagala beaked whlae

Gervais's beaked whale

Ginkgo-toothed beaked whale

grey beaked whale

Hector's beaked whale

Hubbs' beaked whale

Perrin's beaked whale

Pygmy beaked whale

Ramari's beaked whale

Sowerby's beaked whale

Spade-toothed whale

Strap-toothed whale

True's beaked whale

Stejners beaked whales

As you can see from the whale family tree, the sperm whales are separate from the rest. However, they are toothed whales so belong in this section of the page.

pygmy sperm whale

Sperm-whale-by-Gabriel-Barathieu

June 9, 2023June 16, 2023

Humpback whale sighting off Cornwall first in summer for a long time

There has been a steady 1 or 2 sightings of humpback whales off the coast of Cornwall over the last 5 or so years – with Cornwall wildlife trust identifying 10 individuals. However the others have visited in the winter, so this might be an indication of a recovering population.

This one was encountered about 2 miles from shore, so would only be seen from a boat.

Unfortunately, there is still a great deal of recovery that this whale population has to do. At their lowest it is thought that there were only 700 in the North Atlantic, but that number is now 35,000. You might think that this is a fantastic recovery, but best estimates suggest that there were around 200,000 humpback whales in the 16th century, before whaling began, so the population could still grow to be 500% of its current size and still not have reached the number of individuals that once existed.

Still, it just makes it clear, whether on the land or at sea, keep your eyes peeled, many species are recovering, and you never know what you might spot.

June 23, 2021July 1, 2022

Man accidently grabbed by a whale

A lobster diver suddenly found himself in the mouth of a humpback whale.

Large whales on earth feed exclusively on small sea creatures, and have baleen sheets that stop larger creatures being swallowed.

As such after diving a distance, the whale surfaced and violently shook it’s head to empty it’s mouth, and the man was pulled back into his boat.

While episodes like this might happen from time to time, whales remain animals generally without any animus towards humans. They can not eat us, and now we are not exterminating them they do not fear us.

They are, however, very large and as such can accidently hurt people if they get too close

Hermanus in Walker Bay, east of Cape town

Hermanaus

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Hermanus is one of the worlds best places to watch whales from the land, and therefore is well worth some time if you are visiting the Cape of South Africa.

Sitting on the beach watching the whales play in the bay is an experience that long stays in the memory. Generally the whales (in this instance Souhtern right whales) are present from June to December, though on occasion they do appear as early as April. However, the whales are not the only thing to enjoy in Hermanus.

We currently have one area for people to stay in Hermanus though it is rather special.

With a variety of flowers and birds found within the reserve and in the surrounding area, and whales and sharks viewable from the coast, this stay can be nature packed.

You can also simply spend time on the reserve and enjoy the beach.

A variety of activities including kayaking, biking, quad biking and shark cage diving (all sorts of marine wildlife can be seen on these trips) can also be undertaken. Boating and kayaking is also available

Beyond the border of the reserve, there are caves to explore and more beaches to visit among many activities.

There are two places to stay within the reserve, Mosaic lagoon house consisting of a family suite and a suite for a couple, and the Perivola house a 4 bedroom place for the sole use of one group at a time.