Odontocete sightings collected during offshore cruises in the western and southwestern Caribbean Sea

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Lat. Am. J. Aquat. Mamm. 7(1-2): 57-62, December 2009 ISSN 1676-7497
1 Received on 11 April 2010. Acepted on 2 June 2010. Managed by Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse.
2 Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada (CICESE) - Unidad La Paz, Miraflores 334, La Paz, BCS
23050, México.
3 Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano, Facultad de Ciencias Naturales, Carrera 2 No. 11-68, El Rodadero, Santa Marta, Colombia.
4 Current address: Centro de Investigaciones Oceanográficas e Hidrográficas (CIOH), Área de Oceanografía Operacional, Escuela
Naval de Cadetes ‘Almirante Padilla’, Barrio El Bosque, Sector Manzanillo, Cartagena, Colombia.
5 Universidad UNILASALLE-Manaus, Rua Ajuriaca, 361, Bairro Aleixo, 69.083-020, Manaus, AM, Brasil.
6 Fundación Omacha, Calle 86A No. 23-38, Bogotá DC, Colombia.
7 Ocean Alliance, 191 Weston Road, Lincoln, MA 01773, USA.
8 Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, University of Hawaii, 1000 Pope Road, MSB 312, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.
9 NOAA, NMFS, Southwest Fisheries Science Center, Environmental Research Division, 1352 Lighthouse Avenue, Pacific Grove, CA
93950-2097, USA.
* Corresponding author, e-mail: Daniel.Palacios@noaa.gov.
10 Torres, F., Obregón, C. and Trujillo, F. (1988) Expedición Siben en costas colombianas. Interpolar Research Society and Long-term
Research Institute, Lincoln, MA, USA. Unpublished report. 12p. [Available from the authors].
11 Beltrán-Pedreros, S. (1990) Avistamiento de mamíferos marinos en el Caribe Colombiano, área de San Andrés, Providencia y Los Cayos.
Centro de Investigaciones Oceanográficas e Hidrológicas, Cartagena, Colombia. Unpublished report. 10pp. [Available from the authors].
ODONTOCETE SIGHTINGS COLLECTED DURING OFFSHORE CRUISES
IN THE WESTERN AND SOUTHWESTERN CARIBBEAN SEA1
MARIO A. PARDO2, ANGÉLICA MEJÍA-FAJARDO3,4, SANDRA BELTRÁN-PEDREROS5,
FERNANDO TRUJILLO6, IAIN KERR7 AND DANIEL M. PALACIOS8,9, *
While the cetacean fauna of the eastern Caribbean Sea
(i.e. the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles and
Venezuela) is reasonably well known (e.g. Erdman et
al., 1973; Taruski and Winn, 1976; Mignucci-Gianonni,
1998; Romero et al., 2001; 2002; Swartz et al., 2003;
Acevedo-Galindo, 2007), portions of the western and
southwestern regions remain virtually unexplored.
Here we present 14 odontocete sightings made
during four offshore cruises in Colombian and
Panamanian waters spanning the period 1988-2008.
Observations of the spinner dolphin (Stenella
longirostris), the false killer whale (Pseudorca crassidens)
and the sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) are the first
for these areas.
Two cruises over continental shelf and slope waters
of the southwestern Caribbean were conducted in
1988 and 1994 through a collaboration between
American and Colombian organizations. The purpose
of these cruises was to provide training in cetacean
research techniques to local scientists, with a focus
on sperm whale acoustic tracking using towed
hydrophone arrays. The two cruises employed similar
vessels (sailboats) and followed similar routes. The
Caribbean leg of the ‘Expedición Siben’ took place
between 12-15 May 1988 aboard the 27m R/V Siben,
covering 698.7km between Cartagena, Colombia, and
Colón, Panamá (Torres et al., 198810; Figure 1c). The
second cruise took place between 23-28 April 1994
aboard the 28m R/V Odyssey, covering 462.4km along
the route Colón-Cartagena (Figure 1c). On both
cruises, two observers maintained visual watches
during daylight hours (07:00-18:00h, weather
permitting), using the naked eye or hand-held
binoculars. On the Siben the observation was
conducted from the bow and the stern (3-4m above
the waterline), while on the Odyssey observers were
positioned atop the ship’s pilothouse (4m above the
waterline) and in the crow’s nest on the main mast
(18m above the waterline). Whenever possible,
cetacean groups were approached to confirm species
identification and group size, either by the sailing
vessel or using auxiliary inflatable boats.
The other two cruises were organized by the Dirección
General Marítima de Colombia (DIMAR), through its
Centro de Investigaciones Oceanográficas e
Hidrográficas (CIOH) aboard the 50.9m R/V Malpelo.
The CIOH conducts oceanographic surveys in
Colombian waters on a regular basis, and for these
cruises it invited marine mammal biologists to use the
vessel as a platform of opportunity. One took place in
waters of the San Andrés, Providencia and the Cays
Archipelago, western Caribbean, between 6-13 August
1990. Its objective was to carry out a hydroacoustic
assessment in waters of the archipelago using a fisheries
echosounder along a predetermined 1607.2km track
(Beltrán-Pedreros, 199011; Figure 1b). During daylight
hours (06:00-19:00h), one observer searched for
cetaceans from the ship’s flying bridge 10m above the
waterline with the aid of hand-held binoculars. Since
sightings were not closed on, only cetacean groups that
occurred near the ship could be identified and counted.
The other cruise was carried out off the central
Colombian coast between 10-25 August 2008. Its main
purpose was to collect oceanographic and biochemical
data along the groundtrack of the altimetric satellite
JASON-1 (Figure 1d). Searching for cetaceans was
conducted from Malpelo’s flying bridge by three
observers who looked toward the bow, port and
starboard sectors, respectively (Mejía-Fajardo, 2009).
Due to logistical constraints, search effort was divided
into 20min intervals, alternating between on and off
periods (Figure 1d).
e-ISSN 2236-1057 - doi:10.5597/lajam00135
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58 M.A.PARDO et al.
Lat. Am. J. Aquat. Mamm. 7(1-2): 57-62, December 2009
Figure 1. (a) Map of the Caribbean Sea showing the areas where the cruises took place. Insets: tracks and cetacean sightings in the
western and southwestern Caribbean during the (b) Malpelo-1990, (c) Siben-1988 and Odyssey-1994, and (d) Malpelo-2008 cruises,
respectively. Sighting locations are shown as circles with numbers corresponding to those in Table 1. The limits of the Colombian and
Panamanian Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) (source: VLIZ, 200912; striped lines) and selected bathymetric contours (source:
SRTM30_PLUS global topography v.6.0, available from <http://topex.ucsd.edu/>) are also shown.
12 VLIZ (2009) Maritime Boundaries Geodatabase - World EEZ Version 5.0. Flanders Marine Institute. [Available online from the
Flanders Marine Institute, Ostend, Belgium, <http://www.vliz.be/vmdcdata/marbound>, consulted on 8 October 2009].

ODONTOCETE SIGHTINGS IN THE W AND SW CARIBBEAN SEA 59
Lat. Am. J. Aquat. Mamm. 7(1-2): 57-62, December 2009
Fourteen sightings of six odontocete species were
collected during the four cruises: Atlantic spotted
dolphins (Stenella frontalis), pantropical spotted dolphins
(Stenella attenuata), common bottlenose dolphins
(Tursiops truncatus), spinner dolphins (Stenella
longirostris), false killer whales (Pseudorca crassidens) and
sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) (Table 1). A
medium-sized group (30-40 animals) of spinner
dolphins was sighted during the Siben cruise in May
1988 in Panamanian waters. The sighting occurred at
a depth of 548m over the continental slope (Table 1,
Figure 1). The species is known from several sightings
and strandings in the eastern Caribbean around
Curaçao, Puerto Rico, St. Vincent, the Virgin Banks,
Dominica, St. Lucia, and Venezuela (Caldwell et al., 1971;
Erdman et al., 1973; Taruski and Winn, 1976; Jefferson
and Lynn, 1994; Romero et al., 2001; 2002), but this one
is the first record for the southwestern Caribbean.
Two sperm whale sightings were made during these
cruises: the first one was a group of ten individuals in
441m water near San Andrés Island, during the Malpelo
cruise in August 1990, while the second one was a group
of eight individuals, including two calves, in Panamanian
waters during the Odyssey cruise in April 1994. This group
occurred near the Colombian border over a submarine
ridge in 1578m waters (Table 1, Figure 1c). A photograph
of an animal’s fluke was taken and submitted to the North
Atlantic and Mediterranean Sperm Whale Catalogue
(NAMSC, catalogue numbers: WCI-1994-376-14, WCI-
1994-376-15, and WCI-1994-376-16) (Figure 2). Sperm
whales were also heard on the Siben’s hydrophones off
Barranquilla, prior to the ship’s arrival to Cartagena.
These are the first records of the species in the western
and southwestern Caribbean and it is uncertain whether
these animals belong to either of the better-known
populations of the eastern Caribbean (Gordon et al., 1998;
Gero et al., 2007) or the Gulf of Mexico (Weller et al., 2000),
or whether they are their own entity (no matches were
found with the NAMSC).
False killer whales were sighted during the Malpelo cruise
in August 1990 close to Serrana Cay, to the northeast of
Providencia Island, in 798m water (Table 1, Figure 1).
This is the first record of the species for Colombian waters
and for the western Caribbean. Three subsequent
sightings have been recently reported along the
continental coast near Santa Marta and in the Tayrona
National Natural Park (Fraija et al., 2009), and a stranding
of a single animal occurred in the nearby Santuario de
Fauna y Flora Los Flamencos in June 2001 (Pardo et al., 2009).
The species is better known from the eastern Caribbean,
where it prefers deep waters around oceanic islands
(Mignucci-Gianonni, 1998). In the Gulf of Mexico it has
Table 1. Cetacean sighting information collected during the Siben, Malpelo, and Odyssey cruises in the western and southwestern
Caribbean between 1988 and 2008.
(*) Sighting numbers correspond to those inside circles in Figure 1.
(**) Source: SRTM30_PLUS global topography v.6.0, [Available from <http://topex.ucsd.edu/ >.
GROUP SIZE POSITION SIGHTING* SPECIES
Min. Max. Longitude Latitude
DEPTH (m)** DATE
R/V Siben: 698.65km
1
Stenella frontalis 12 17 76º06’00”W 10º12’00”N 1234 12/5/1988
2
Tursiops truncatus 3 3 77º25’12”W 9º03’36”N 1241 15/5/1988
3
Stenella longirostris 30 40 77º25’12”W 8º56’02”N 548 15/5/1988
R/V Malpelo: 1607.20km
4 Stenella attenuata 300 400 79º12’00”W 15º25’30”N 2283 6/8/1990
5 Pseudorca crassidens 3 4 80º30’00”W 14º12’00”N 798 7/8/1990
6 Tursiops truncatus 35 40 40º81’00”W 14º52’00”N 436 9/8/1990
7 Physeter macrocephalus 10 10 81º42’00”W 12º39’00”N 441 11/8/1990
R/V Odyssey: 462.39km
8
Physeter macrocephalus 8 8 77º30’00”W 9º30’00”N 1578 27/4/1994
9
Tursiops truncatus 2 2 75º45’00”W 10º18’26”N 161 28/4/1994
R/V Malpelo: 318.47km (effective effort)
10 Stenella frontalis 10 20 74º17’14” 12º00’14” 2162 11/8/2008
11 Unidentified dolphin 7 11 73º24’21” 14º40’15” 2208 12/8/2008
12 Tursiops truncatus 4 6 75º37’32” 10º24’13” 96 15/8/2008
13 Unidentified dolphin 1 1 73º38’16” 13º50’33” 4002 23/8/2008
14 Tursiops truncatus 45 50 75º32’46” 10º59’12” 1029 25/8/2008

60 M.A.PARDO et al.
Lat. Am. J. Aquat. Mamm. 7(1-2): 57-62, December 2009
been recorded mainly in summer, in groups ranging from
1 to 35 animals and in waters ranging in depth from 974
to 1091m (Jefferson, 1996; Mullin et al., 2004).
A medium-sized group (12-17 individuals) of Atlantic
spotted dolphins was sighted near Cartagena during the
Siben cruise in May 1988. The group occurred over a
narrow slope in 1234m waters (Figure 1c). A similarly
sized group was sighted aboard R/V Malpelo in August
2008, to the north of Santa Marta, over the continental
slope at a depth of 2162m (Table 1, Figure 1b). This is
one of the most frequently seen species in the Caribbean
Sea (Perrin, 2002), inhabiting shallow coastal waters and
the vicinity of oceanic islands (e.g. Jefferson and Lynn,
1994). It is also common throughout the continental coast
of Colombia, often found in groups of 1-30 individuals
(Pardo and Palacios, 2006).
A large group (300-400 animals) of pantropical
spotted dolphins was sighted during the Malpelo
cruise in August 1990 in oceanic waters of the western
Caribbean, within the Colombia-Jamaica Joint
Regime. The depth of this sighting (2283m) was the
greatest among all sightings collected during the four
cruises (Table 1, Figure 1), and the size of this group
is among the largest for the Caribbean Sea, since the
average is around 34.8 individuals (Mignucci-
Giannoni et al., 2003). Although there are only four
previous records of the species for the Colombian
Caribbean (Vidal, 1990; Jefferson and Lynn, 1994;
Pardo and Palacios, 2006), it has been reported both
in the eastern and western Caribbean (Jefferson and
Lynn, 1994). In coastal waters off Venezuela and
Colombia the groups are small (2-3 individuals)
(Romero et al., 2001; Pardo and Palacios, 2006).
The common bottlenose dolphin was sighted during all
four cruises in small- to medium-sized groups of 2-50
animals. Locations included: near Cartagena, in
Panamanian waters near the Colombian border, north
of the San Andrés, Providencia and the Cays
Archipelago, and off the central Colombian coast. The
sightings occurred in depths ranging between 161 and
1241m (Table 1, Figure 1). This species is commonly
reported along the Colombian coast in groups of 2-20
individuals (Vidal, 1990; Flórez-González and Capella-
Alzueta, 1995; Pardo and Palacios, 2006), and
throughout the Caribbean Sea (Grigg and Markowitz,
1997; Kerr et al., 2005; Romero et al., 2001). Off the central
coast of Venezuela groups average 14.7 and range from
4-30 individuals (Bolaños-Jiménez et al., 200713).
This note documents some of the earliest (as well as more
recent) efforts to conduct marine mammal research in
the Colombian Caribbean, a region that has not received
much attention from the scientific community. The
cruises presented here were exploratory in nature and
were not designed as surveys for estimating abundance.
Except for the Malpelo cruise in 2008, important
information such as the time of start and end of the
observation periods, the sea state and weather
conditions, and the segments of track covered at
nighttime was not recorded or is missing. Nevertheless,
the sighting data collected during the cruises has proved
to be valuable for documenting species occurrence in
the western and southwestern portions of the Caribbean,
where minimal or no information is available (Ward et
al., 2001). Further, these cruises have provided invaluable
Figure 2. Photographs of a sperm whale sighting taken during the Odyssey cruise in 1994. (a) The distinctive fluke of one of the
individuals in the group (NAMSC catalog number WCI-1994-376-15). (b) An adult-calf pair.
13 Bolaños-Jiménez, J., Villarroel-Marín, A., Parsons, E.C.M., and Rose, N.A. (2007) Origin and development of whalewatching in the
state of Aragua, Venezuela: Laying the groundwork for sustainability. Page 16-27 in Proceedings, 5th International Coastal & Marine
Tourism Congress, 11-15 September 2007, Auckland, New Zealand.

ODONTOCETE SIGHTINGS IN THE W AND SW CARIBBEAN SEA 61
Lat. Am. J. Aquat. Mamm. 7(1-2): 57-62, December 2009
opportunities for national capacity building. In recent
years DIMAR has become interested in incorporating a
marine mammal component in its cruises: since 2004 it
has regularly invited marine mammal observers on its
biannual cruises in Pacific waters of Colombia (Herrera-
Carmona, 2009; Palacios et al., submitted), and efforts
to implement standardized data collection protocols on
its Caribbean cruises are underway. Thus, future
surveys will provide the necessary information for
abundance estimation, population structure and
management actions, all of which have been identified
as research priorities at the national level (Flórez-
González and Capella-Alzueta, 1995), as well as in the
Action Plan for the Conservation of Marine Mammals
in the Wider Caribbean Region (UNEP, 2008).
Acknowledgements
The American institution sponsoring the Siben and
Odyssey expeditions in Colombian waters was the non-
profit Long-term Research Institute, now operating as
the Ocean Alliance (Lincoln, MA). Its Colombian
counterparts were the Grupo para las Investigaciones
Submarinas (Cartagena) and the group Seguimiento
de Corazón de Ballenas Vía Satélite (Bogotá). The
catalysts of these expeditions were R. Payne, I. Kerr, J.
Reynolds, A. Vélez-Sierra, J.S. Uribe, A. Vejarano, M.
Obregón, and F. Ospina-Navia. Participants for
Colombia included D.F. Torres, C. Obregon, F. Trujillo,
P.L.R. Brennan and D.M. Palacios. We thank the other
scientists on board and the office support staff,
including T. Lyrholm, L. Galley, B.J. Brennan, and K.
Marshall-Tilas. Participants in the R/V Malpelo cruises
were S. Beltrán-Pedreros (1990, by invitation from
CIOH Navy Captain J. Aguilera) and A. Mejía-Fajardo
(2008). Logistic and financial support for the cruises
was provided by the Interpolar Research Society,
DIMAR/CIOH, and the Universidad Jorge Tadeo
Lozano - Seccional Cartagena. M.A. Pardo was
supported during the preparation of this manuscript
by a grant from the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y
Tecnología (Ciencia Básica 2009 No. 691211 to E. Beier
at CICESE) and by a Grant in Aid of Research from the
Society for Marine Mammalogy. Comments from J.
Bolaños-Jiménez and an anonymous referee helped
improve an earlier version of this manuscript.
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