Cetaceans in Greece: Present status of knowledge

FALSE REPORTS OF CETACEAN SPECIES IN THE GREEK SEAS
Apart from the species presented in this report as recorded in the Greek Seas, some more
cetacean species have appeared in scientific publications, conference proceedings, popular
articles, official state booklets or other documents. After checking thoroughly the original
data of each of those cases, six more species were found to have been incorrectly included
in the Greek cetacean fauna in the past. These are: the Sowerby's beaked whale
Mesoplodon bidens, the Blainville's beaked whale Mesoplodon densirostris, the long-finned
pilot whale Globicephala melas, the white whale or beluga Delphinapterus leucas, the killer
whale Orcinus orca and the blue whale Balaenoptera musculus. Below we provide details
for each of those cases.
The floating carcass of a beaked whale was originally reported as a Sowerby's beaked
whale (Mesoplodon bidens; Poulopoulos 1989). In a later paper the same case was
presented as Blainville's beaked whale (Mesoplodon densirostris; pers. comm. by G.
Poulopoulos in Cebrian and Papaconstantinou 1992) and later it was identified again as
Sowerby's beaked whale (Mesoplodon bidens; Frantzis et al. 2003) according to the early
published descriptions from in situ observations and the available low quality photos in the
original paper (Poulopoulos 1989). The recent discovery of the original photos showed that
the descriptions did not correspond to reality, since this animal was clearly a Cuvier’s
beaked whale. Original photos from another stranded cetacean showed that this was a false
killer whale despite the stranding form filled by local authorities that reported a stranded
long-finned pilot whale (Androukaki and Tounta, 1994). Due to a wrong assumption the
white whale (Delphinapterus leucas) was referred to as accidental species in the Greek
Seas (Cebrian and Papaconstantinou, 1992). The authors thought that a specimen found
wandering along the coasts of the Black Sea had previously crossed the Aegean Sea;
however, later it became known that the whale had escaped from an Ukrainian delphinarium
in the Black Sea. The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) incorrectly appeared in editions,
leaflets and posters of some public services, based on a single fisherman’s report referring
to a ‘30 m long whale’. McBrearty et al. (1986) mentioned a sighting of a lone killer whale
(Orcinus orca) in the Aegean Sea and a sighting of long-finned pilot whales (Globicephala
melas) in southern Greece. One more killer whale sighting from the Aegean Sea exists in
the literature as personal communication from McBrearty (Hammond and Lockyer, 1988).
We looked for McBrearty’s original data, but we learned that he let colleagues know that he
destroyed them some decades ago after he wrote his paper (P. Evans, pers. comm.).
Anyway, these data originated from individual observers who were not specialists (i.e.
fishermen, yachtsmen, captains, etc.), and species identifications were often retained even
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