These rare whales had never been seen alive. Then a team in Mexico sighted two

The search for a gingko-toothed beaked whale had taken five years, when a thieving albatross nearly ruined it all

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t was an early morning in June 2024 and along the coast of Baja California in Mexico, scientists on the Pacific Storm research vessel were finishing their coffee and preparing for a long day searching for some of the most elusive creatures on the planet. Suddenly a call came from the bridge: “Whales! Starboard side!”

For the next few hours, what looked like a couple of juvenile beaked whales kept surfacing and disappearing until finally Robert Pitman, a now-retired researcher at Oregon State University, fired a small arrow from a modified crossbow at the back of one of them.

The tip carved out a small chunk of skin the size of a pencil eraser. It was this that would later prove to the scientists onboard that they were seeing a species that had never before been seen in the wild: a gingko-toothed beaked whale.