Rare tusked whales have been identified and photographed alive at sea for the first time since a herculean research effort off the coast of Mexico, a new study has revealed.
New-sighted cetaceans are ginkgo-toothed beaked whales (Mesoplodon ginkgodens), which were previously known only from dead specimens washed ashore and from bycatch. This is not unusual for beaked whales, which deep sea divers and notoriously mysteriousspending their lives far from the coastline.
The hunt and subsequent discovery of the elusive creatures was prompted by the recording of a distinct echolocation pulse in the North Pacific Ocean. Researchers began searching for the animals responsible for the mysterious sonar signal in 2020, which led them to a single beaked whale in June 2024. A few days after this sighting, the team discovered a small group of whales, including an adult male with battle scars and an adult female with a calf.
Species of beaked whales are difficult to distinguish from each other, so simply observing the whales is not enough to identify them. The team confirmed what they saw only after collection DNA try it by shooting one of the whales with a crossbow. (Don't worry, the whale is fine.)
The researchers published their findings July 28 in the journal. Marine Mammal Sciencewhich will appear in the next issue of the magazine in January 2026. Lead author of the study Elizabeth Hendersonbioacoustics researcher at the Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, said the findings demonstrated the benefits of determination and refusal to give up.
“Me and some others on this trip (Gustavo Cardenas, Jay Barlow) spent five years looking for these whales; we've spent every year since 2020 searching for them off the coast of Baja, and that effort and determination has paid off with a huge reward,” Henderson told Live Science in an email.
Ginkgo-toothed beaked whales are so named because the males have a pair of teeth that resemble the fan-shaped leaves of the ginkgo tree. In whales, almost all of this shape is hidden in the jaw and gum tissue, with only the tip of each tooth visible on either side of the mouth. As males mature, the teeth grow into small fangs and are used not for food, but as weapons.
“They feed on small squid and fish by suction, so they don't need teeth,” Pitman said. “As a result, females remain toothless throughout their lives, while males retain a single pair of enlarged teeth in the lower jaw, which they use as fangs to compete for access to reproductive females.”
When the team finally tracked down the whales, they saw that one adult male appeared to be battle-hardened with a worn tusk, bruises and scars. Other whales that the researchers recorded during six separate sightings were also tagged, and not just from other whales. Their scars included characteristic white spots, indicating bites cookie sharks are small sock puppet-like fish that feed by tearing off cookie-shaped chunks from larger animals.
The team documented the whales using binocular observations, photographs and hydrophones (underwater microphones). During the fifth encounter, one of the whales swam to within 66 feet (20 meters) of the explorers' ship's stern, and that's when Pitman fired his 150-pound (68-kilogram) crossbow, loaded with a modified arrow with a perforated tip.
“The crossbow arrow (the 'bolt') removes a tiny piece of skin and fat about the size of a pencil eraser,” Pitman said. “Over the years, we have collected thousands of specimens from dozens of species of whales and dolphins.”
Henderson compared the crossbow shot to an ear-piercing gun, and Pitman noted that any of the whale shark bites likely required 50 times more tissue than a crossbow. The arrow was not lodged in the whale, so researchers were able to remove it and tissue. After receiving the sample in the bag, the researchers sent the tissue to a geneticist for testing.
“It took several days to process the material and run the tests, and we all waited with bated breath,” Henderson said. “When we got the results, we were all a little shocked – although they did look like the species, it wasn't the expected area of their distribution, so we ruled that out as a possibility – but we were also very pleased to finally solve the mystery.”
Beachings of ginkgo-toothed beaked whales are quite common in the western Pacific, but only two individuals have ever been recorded stranding in the eastern Pacific. The researchers initially suspected that the whales they saw were Perrin's beaked whales (Mesoplodon perrinii), which, according to Pitman, are known from only six specimens that washed ashore in southern California, and are the least known marine mammals (and large animals) in the world.
Pitman noted that the team now hopes to go looking for Perrin's beaked whales and two other species of beaked whales that have not yet been identified alive in the wild, which will lead to even more underwater calls.
“This is important because once we match the signals for all individual species, we can use passive acoustic monitoring (towing hydrophones behind ships, drift buoys, etc.) and finally know where these whales live, how many there are, and how vulnerable they are to human interference, especially offshore fisheries,” Pitman said.
