Balaenoptera Omurai: The Omura Whale

[Yithian]

There is a whale longer than any orca, and we missed it

Omura's whales can grow to 12m long, but it has taken until now for anyone to find them living in the wild
By Yao-Hua Law

With bodies as long as school buses, you would think that Omura's whales could never go unnoticed. Yet they are among the most mysterious of whales.

The species was only given its name, based on dead specimens, in 2003. Since then scientists have failed to find live ones.

Now the wait is over. Whale researchers have discovered a population of Omura's whales living near Madagascar. Their study, published in Royal Society Open Science, offers the first glimpse of how these elusive whales live.

Biologist Salvatore Cerchio led the study while at the Wildlife Conservation Society. He has since joined the New England Aquarium and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

His team almost missed the Omura's whales. In 2011, they were surveying dolphins in the coastal waters off Madagascar when they encountered three whales: a mother-calf pair and later a lone adult. But they thought they had found Bryde's whales, another little-known whale that lives in the region.

Continued with photos:
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151030-there-is-a-whale-longer-than-any-orca-and-we-missed-it

Rather an elegant-looking creature, I thought. That a bus-long creature can go undiscovered for so long should be heartening for cryptozoologists everywhere.

Cited study: http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/10/150301

 

[Squiddy]

Amazing and hopeful
Still room for beleif that anything could be out there!

 

[oldrover]

Not really. This is an example of an animal being identified as being distinct by laboratory work. They've been encountered in the past, just not fully formally classified.

 

[Squiddy]

Not really. This is an example of an animal being identified as being distinct by laboratory work. They've been encountered in the past, just not fully formally classified.

Oh, how disappointingly technical! So the article is overplaying the difficulty they had in re-locating a living population for study? Is it simply a matter of difficulty of identification?

 

[Aurora Newman]

They must be having a whale of a time. There are quite a few different species out there, that fall in the same category, of being spotted but not made official. I'm still hoping a Flying Unicorn is one. Then I can re die my hair blonde and pretend to be She-Ra. We'd be the top talk of all the Cosplay conventions!

 

[PeteByrdie]

Not really. This is an example of an animal being identified as being distinct by laboratory work. They've been encountered in the past, just not fully formally classified.

I have to agree. While these increasingly common taxonomic discoveries often appear in Karl Shuker's column in Fortean Times, and indeed in his books, personally I don't think they constitute cryptozoological discoveries.