ziphiidae_consultant's Identifications

Fedutin, Ivan & Meschersky, Ilya & Filatova, Olga & Titova, Olga & Bobyr, I. & Burdin, Alexander & Hoyt, Erich. (2020). Records of a New Cetacean Species of the Genus Berardius from Russian Waters. Russian Journal of Marine Biology. 46. 199-206. 10.1134/S1063074020030050.

"The individual from the Sea of Okhotsk coast of Kunashir Island that was found by the staff of the
Kurilskiy State Nature Reserve in May 2015 turned out to be a black beaked whale (sample Bsp1505, the sequence is identical to haplotype b1, according to [9]). This was an adult male (Fig. 2) whose body length from the rostrum tip to the fluke notch was 7.11 m".

Three individuals. Smaller than a minke whale and bigger than a dolphin, guesstimate a length of 6-7 meters. Small blow going forward at 45 degree angle to the surface. Approached the bow of the vessel and went past us heading south. Observed from deck 7 at 13 meters above sea level.

The largest was 9-10m long and they had a kind of slanted "bushy" blow. The gray skin was quite scarred. Large melon and beak. They had a small, shallow, triangular dorsal fin. It's very unusal to see them in such shallow water.