Cuvier’s Beaked Whale

Cuvier’s Beaked Whale Facts

LATIN NAME Ziphius cavirostris

LENGTH About 4.5–7 m (15–23 ft).

WEIGHT About 1,800–3,100 kg (4,000–6,800 pounds).

LIFETIME Up to about 60 years.

PHYSICAL TRAITS Males develop two tusk-like, cone-shaped teeth in the right and left corners near the tip of their lower jaw. The females have these same teeth, but they usually remain unerupted. Older animals often show a paler head and linear scars.

BEHAVIOR Like other toothed whales, Cuvier’s beaked whales use echolocation for navigation and foraging. They produce a series of clicks, which are high-frequency sound pulses.

The recordings are stereotypical hunting clicks—the single clicks might be likened to a “blinking flashlight” seeking prey. Once the prey is located, they “keep the light on,” creating a rapid buzz as the flashes get shorter—matching the sound-travel distance to the prey as they move in for the catch. This is a common acoustical characteristic of many echolocating odontocetes.

The first recording captures the rapid buzz heard once the prey is located; the second presents the single clicks used while seeking prey. These clicks are emitted in a narrow, forward-directed beam and are reflected back to the whale by objects in the environment, providing information about the location and nature of the object. The flashes get shorter as the whale closes the sound-travel distance, changing from separated search clicks to the terminal buzz used as it moves in for the catch.

The deepest recorded dive reached 9,816 feet (2,992 m), and the longest documented dive lasted 222 minutes. The deepest and longest documented dives reveal extraordinary adaptations for oxygen storage, pressure tolerance, and long periods without breathing. Most dives are shorter, but Cuvier’s beaked whales routinely forage in deep waters under great pressure, where there is no light and sound is their most effective way to find prey.

Beaked whales are a very deep-diving group, foraging as deep as 3,000 m (nearly 10,000 ft). At this depth they are subject to roughly 300 atmospheres of pressure. Under these pressures, their lungs and other air spaces collapse as they descend—one of several adaptations that allow them to spend long periods at depth while limiting nitrogen absorption.

HABITAT Deep offshore waters, especially continental slopes, submarine canyons, and seamounts, usually deeper than 1,000 m (3,300 ft).

LOCATIONS Cuvier’s beaked whales are the most widespread of the beaked whales, found worldwide in deep waters outside the high polar regions. They occur in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, as well as the Mediterranean Sea.

FOOD Primarily squid, along with fish and crustaceans.

PREDATORS Orcas are known predators. Larger sharks have also been suggested as possible predators, but direct observations are limited.

Scientists explored the pathology of Navy sonar-associated beaked whale strandings in Grand Abaco, Bahamas, in 2000 and the Canary Islands in 2002. Necropsies from the Canary Islands revealed gas and fat emboli and other lesions consistent with a decompression-like syndrome. It took a few years of informed debate to understand that the whales had been foraging in deep waters, under great pressure. The evidence does not show that sonar simply deafened the whales or that, being panicked, they immediately headed to the surface. The best-supported understanding is that mid-frequency sonar can disrupt their typical diving and foraging behaviors, potentially contributing to harmful gas-bubble formation—an injury sometimes compared to “the bends” that divers can experience after too rapid a decompression. Scientists continue to study the precise chain of events.