First records of the pygmy sperm whale, Kogia breviceps, in Scotland

Abstract

• The pygmy sperm whale, Kogia breviceps, is a poorly known cetacean species, which has been recorded rarely in the British Isles (Leaper and Evans, 2008). It is an oceanic species that inhabits tropical to warmer temperate waters worldwide (Caldwell and Caldwell, 1989). In the North Atlantic it strands reasonably commonly on the coast of the southeast USA (125 strandings between Puerto Rico and Maine 1999-2003 (Waring et al., 2005) as far north as Canada, and in the eastern Atlantic it has been recorded from the Bay of Biscay, stranding from Portugal to the western coast of France with fewer records from the Netherlands and the British Isles (Evans, 1991; Santos et al., 2006). Here we record the first strandings of pygmy sperm whales in Scotland.