[Animals] The "ghost" cetacean of the Mediterranean chooses the Costa Brava to settle

[Draeno]

 

 

It's not exactly a dolphin or a whale. Cuvier's beaked whale is an elusive, shy cetacean that is difficult to spot, as it spends 95% of its life underwater. "The ghost of the ocean", an expert dares to nickname it. This insatiable squid eater hardly appears in the whale guides of Catalonia. However, the accumulation of observations on the Empordà coast leads to an unequivocal conclusion: the beaked whale has settled in to live in the La Fonera canyon, an underwater abyss in which it shares a home with the mediatic Palamós shrimp.

"Knowing that a stable po[CENSORED]tion of this species lives in front of Begur and Palamós is good news for the threatened Mediterranean biodiversity," celebrates Clàudia Auladell, a marine biologist from Noa18nusos, one of the entities that has recorded sightings.

This animal can be 20 continuous minutes underwater. "That he decides to come out and breathe next to your boat is an unlikely coincidence," admits Auladell. They lived the last observation with nerves and emotion: "We stopped the engine of the boat and waited." Surprisingly, this inconspicuous odontocete emerged from the depths in the same place where it had been located.

 

https://www.elperiodico.com/es/sociedad/20230415/cetaceo-zifio-de-cuvier-fantasma-mediterraneo-costa-brava-85951343