Dear Colleagues,
on behalf of all my co-authors I am delighted to announce the following
publication:
Notarbartolo di Sciara G., Kerem D., Smeenk C., Rudolph P., Cesario A., Costa
M., Elasar M., Feingold D., Fumagalli M., Goffman O., Hadar N., Mebrathu Y.T.,
Scheinin A. 2017. Cetaceans of the Red Sea. CMS Technical Series 33, 86 p. ISBN
978-3-937429-21-2
Abstract. Based on a review of the literature, complemented by original
observations at sea made by the authors during the past 34 years, the cetacean
fauna in the Red Sea appears to be composed of a total of 16 species: three
Mysticetes (Bryde’s whale, Balaenoptera edeni; Omura’s whale, B. omurai; and
humpback whale, Megaptera novaeangliae) and 13 Odontocetes (dwarf sperm whale,
Kogia sima; killer whale, Orcinus orca; false killer whale, Pseudorca
crassidens; short-finned pilot whale, Globicephala macrorhynchus; Risso’s
dolphin, Grampus griseus; Indian Ocean humpback dolphin, Sousa plumbea;
rough-toothed dolphin, Steno bredanensis; Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin,
Tursiops aduncus; common bottlenose dolphin, T. truncatus; pantropical spotted
dolphin, Stenella attenuata; spinner dolphin, S. longirostris; striped dolphin,
S. coeruleoalba; Indo-Pacific common dolphin, Delphinus delphis tropicalis).
This review presents the very first documented and confirmed sightings of B.
omurai, K. sima and S. bredanensis in the Red Sea. Of all the above species,
however, only nine (Bryde’s whale, false killer whale, Risso’s dolphin, Indian
Ocean humpback dolphin, Indo- Pacific bottlenose dolphin, common bottlenose
dolphin, pantropical spotted dolphin, spinner dolphin, and Indo- Pacific common
dolphin) appeared to occur regularly in the Red Sea, the remaining seven only
occurring sporadically as vagrants from the Indian Ocean. Even regular species
appeared not to be uniformly distributed throughout the Red Sea, e.g., with
Indo- Pacific common dolphins mostly limited to the southern portion of the
region, and the Gulf of Suez only hosting the two bottlenose dolphin species
and Indian Ocean humpback dolphins. No convincing evidence was found of the Red
Sea occurrence of two whale species mentioned in the literature: the common
minke whale, Balaenoptera acutorostrata, and the sperm whale, Physeter
macrocephalus. The absence from the region of deep diving species (e.g.,
Ziphiidae and the sperm whale) can be explained by the geomorphology of the
Straits of Bab al Mandab, with its extended shallow sill likely to discourage
incursions by such species into the Red Sea. The coordinated effort and the
different expertise of the authors has contributed to amending previous
mistakes and inaccuracies, verifying and validating specimen identification,
highlighting features of relevance for species taxonomy and, most importantly,
drawing a fundamental baseline to inform conservation of cetaceans in the Red
Sea.
The publication is dedicated to the memory of our dear friend and colleague
Chris Smeenk, who has served as co-author and co-editor of this work and passed
away days before it went to press.
The document can be freely downloaded from the website of the Convention on
Migratory Species of Wild Animals at:
http://cms.int/en/publication/cetaceans-red-sea-cms-technical-series-no-33
<http://cms.int/en/publication/cetaceans-red-sea-cms-technical-series-no-33>
Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara
Tethys Research Institute
Viale G.B. Gadio 2, 20121 Milano, Italy
[email protected]
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