One of the beaked whales Ali spotted off Aitutaki

Ali was the first person to recognize and identify beaked whales in the Cook Islands. On August 05, 1999, she was sleeping under a towel in the bow of the small, open boat from which we were surveying for humpback whales, taking a break from the sun and her older brother Jody. It was an unusually calm day off the lovely island of Aitutaki; nice because the boat didn't bounce up and down over the choppy seas, but hot because the tradewinds had abated from their wave-building 20-30 knots, replaced by a gentle 8 knot breeze. At approximately 10:18 Ali sat up and rubbed her eyes, looking over the gunnel ahead of us. Suddenly she exclaimed, "Look, fins!" and there they were, a group of at least four Densebeaked whales, the same species Ali has seen so much of off the Bahamas.

Without her sharp eyes we would have motored right by the first confirmed beaked whale sighting in the Cook Islands. We talked to lots of fishermen afterwards and showed them our video and photographs of the beaked whales. To our surprise, some of the fishermen recognized the bizarre looking whales and said they see them several times a year, usually in the deeper water off Aitutaki, and only on the calmest days.

Jason and Junior both recognized the beaked whales when Ali spotted them. But beaked whales, dolphins, and humpbacks are just distractions for these guys - they're after fish like these. This day when Ali was longer than their fish!

We saw more beaked whales off of Rarotonga several weeks later on another flat calm day. This time we were speeding towards a singing humpback whale when the beaked whales popped up just in front of us. Sonny Tatuava, from Marine Fisheries, quickly stopped the boat while we grabbed our cameras. After a couple of photos they dove quickly and it wasn't until 10 minutes later that we resighted them. Again, they disappeared and we were searching madly when we saw them for the third time. The beaked whales, traditionally thought to be so skittish, came in to the boat and circled us just the way they have done off the Bahamas. They seemed as curious as we were.

One of the three densebeaked whales surfacing off Rarotonga

We quickly recognized these as Mesoplodon densirostris, the same species we are documenting off of the Bahamas. After we got photo-IDs of all three of them, we suited up and eased over the side to see how they'd react. Their close approaches to the boat and curiosity were so similar to what we've experienced in the Bahamas we thought these Rarotonga beaked whales might be equally interested in us underwater.

Sure enough, a beaked whale soon materialized out of the blue, effortlessly soaring towards us and we got some great underwater footage.

Rarotongan carver Mike Tavioni with skull of a Mesoplodon densirostris which stranded on Raro in 1990

Beaked whales are notoriously difficult to identify. The adult males of most species have large, tusk-like teeth which can indicate the species. But the females and juveniles can be identified only through extensive morphological analysis. When a Cuvier's beaked whale stranded in 1988, no one could identify the bizarre animal.

Beaked whales are so bizarre in appearance that people are usually perplexed by stranded animals. The author of this article in the Cook Islands News was unsure whether the animal was even a whale.

Gerald McCormack identified the whale in this follow up article a few days later

Gerald McCormack, an inquisitive biologist working to document the biodiversity of the Cook Islands, decided to take a stab at identifying this mysterious whale. Gerald initially had thought that it was a Gingko-toothed beaked whale based on the shape of the teeth that he and Mike extracted from the lower jaw. However, Gerald knew he hadn't definitively identified the whale and consulted with specialists in New Zealand for assistance. He received a batch of scientific papers and a long list of skull measurements he would need to identify the whale morphologically. Gerald discovered that the whale was a Mesoplodon densirostris. Photo shows a few of the many measurements Gerald needed to make to identify the beaked whale.

Several days before Ali found the beaked whales off Aitutaki in August, we learned of two beaked whale skeletons which were lying at the high-tide mark on remote Manuae atoll. When the fishing is poor off Aitutaki, the braver and better equipped Aitutakians venture the 50 miles of open ocean to Manuae, a tiny uninhabited atoll. (Click on the map to see it full size.)

In June 1998 an expedition of several boats and a dozen fishermen set off to Manuae from Aitutaki to fish - no small undertaking as the largest boat was just 7.5-m. Several of the party landed on the atoll to fish the lagoon while the others trolled outside the reef. Shortly after landing they found two dead, freshly stranded whales. No one knew what they were. The beaked whales looked like dolphins, but were far too long. And they had strange teeth which protruded from the tips of their lower jaws. New Zealander Kydd Pollack and his father Rick, veteran fishermen who have been visiting Aitutaki for almost 20 years, took several photos of one of the carcasses. When Kydd and Rick got their film developed back in New Zealand, they pored through whale books and realized they were beaked whales.

One of two beaked whales which stranded on Manuae in 1998

Kydd and Rick returned to Manuae in July, 1999, and found the skeletons of the two beaked whales still intact. We met them in Aitutaki just after they returned, and spent the rest of our time there trying to organize another expedition over to Manuae. The tradewinds never abated long enough to enable us to power over and pick up the skeletons. So we stuck to our humpback surveying and scanned the horizon for blows from our small research boat - until Ali spotted the densebeaked whales right under our noses.

The combination of these strandings with our encounters, fishermen's sightings, and the bathymetry of the Cook Islands lead us to think beaked whales may frequent these waters.

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