Spade-Toothed Beaked Whale

The world’s rarest whale, the spade-toothed beaked whale has been seen for the first time. Before recently, little was known about the spade-toothed beaked whale. All scientists had to go on were three partial skulls that had been found in Chile and New Zealand over 140 years. In fact, scientists were not even sure if this type of whale still existed.

These whales, mother and baby, were discovered on a New Zealand beach, they had gotten stuck there and died. Whenever a whale is beached in New Zealand the New Zealand Department of Conservation takes pictures and tissue samples. After this the whales where at first identified as Gray's beaked whales. It was not until a DNA analysis was performed on the whales that scientists realized their mistake. The whales were spade-toothed beaked whales, not Gray's beaked whales. If not for the data analysis scientists could have been easily mislead.

There are three very interesting points that stand out to in this article. The first and most obvious is the fact that this whale was discovered after so many years of not knowing if it even still existed. The second that DNA analysis is done with whales. This is definitely important because you can never know enough about the species around you and this allows scientists to learn about changes in whales DNA over time. The third is the fact that the ocean is so big that scientists had no clue if this type of whale still existed. It’s a whale... it’s not like they're small by any means (this one was over five meters long). If scientists were unsure that this mammal still existed what else don't they know about? This article brings a bit of perspective in how large the ocean truly is. There could be millions of species we are unaware of, ranging from something as big as a whale to as small as a bacterium. It is crazy how much we don’t know about the world around us, especially the ocean. The ocean is so huge; will we ever truly be able to identify every type of specie in the ocean, or at least half of them?