Adult Male © Phil Coles

Quick Facts
Length 5.5m Distribution
Sub arctic cold temperate waters of the north Pacific and Bering sea.
Weight ? Identification
Teeth are very large in adult males. The melon is flatter than in the similar Hubb’s beaked whale and the mouth line has a stronger arch. Males have considerable scarring.
Diet Mostly deep sea squid. Threats
Some by-catch and ingestion of rubbish.
Group size 2-15  

Adult Male (upper)
Adult female (lower)
© Phil Coles

Stejneger’s Beaked whale is restricted to the cold waters of the north Pacific from Japan and California north to Alaska and the Bering Sea. With its essentially sub-arctic distribution it is the North Pacific equivalent of Sowerby’s beaked whale in the North Atlantic, and is probably the dominant beaked whale in its range. This is one of the larger-toothed beaked whales with triangular, forward-oriented, teeth positioned mid-way along the lower jaw on a raised ridge similar to, but not a prominent as, that of Blainville’s beaked whale. As with many mesoplodons it has rarely been seen alive but it is reported to form groups of up to 15 and mass strandings of up to 4 animals have been reported.

They are typically coloured animals – darker above and lighter below, although the pigmentation may vary. A pale collar or shoulder region is seen in some animals with a darker area over the top of the head. In areas where cookie-cutter sharks are found the whales are often covered with the round white scars of their bites. Males are also heavily scarred as a result of fights – raking one another with their large teeth. They have a dark ’flipper pocket’, or depression on the sides of their bodies into which their flippers can rest. The underside of the tail flukes (in some animals at least) have irregular white streaks. Stejneger’s are probably hard to distinguish from Hubb’s beaked whales that share the lower parts of their range, but males the former lack the white beak and cap of the later, while in both sexes the melon is less prominent in Stejneger’s as in the round headed Hubb’s.


 

 
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