Department, Naval
Undersea Center, San Diego, CA 92132.]

[Footnote 2: Biocommunication and Marine Mammal Research Facility, C. V.
Whitney Marine Research Laboratory of the University of Florida, St.
Augustine, FL 32084.]

[Footnote 3: Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode
Island, Kingston, RI 02881.]

[Footnote 4: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543
and Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
02138.]

ABSTRACT

This field guide is designed to permit observers to identify the
cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) they see in the western
North Atlantic, including the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the
coastal waters of the United States and Canada. The animals described
are grouped not by scientific relationships but by similarities in
appearance in the field. Photographs of the animals in their natural
environment are the main aids to identification.

A dichotomized key is provided to aid in identification of stranded
cetaceans and appendices describe how and to whom to report data on live
and dead cetaceans.

INTRODUCTION

All whales, dolphins, and porpoises belong to an order or major
scientific group called the Cetacea by scientists. They are all mammals
(air-breathing animals which have hair in at least some stage of their
development, maintain a constant body temperature, bear their young
alive, and nurse them for a while) which have undergone extensive
changes in body form (anatomy) and function (physiology) to cope with a
life spent entirely in the water. The breathing aperture(s), called a
blowhole or blowholes, has (have) migrated to the top of the head to
facilitate breathing while swimming; the forward appendages have become
flippers; the hind appendages have nearly disappeared, they remain only
as small traces of bone deeply imbedded in the muscles. Propulsion is
provided by fibrous, horizontally flattened tail flukes.

Scientists recognize two suborders of living cetaceans: the whalebone
whales, suborder Mysticeti, and the toothed whales, suborder Odontoceti.
The two groups are separated in the following ways:

BALEEN OR WHALEBONE WHALES. These animals are called whalebone whales
because when fully formed instead of teeth they have up to 800 or more
plates of baleen or whalebone depending from the roof of the mouth. They
use these plates to strain their food, which consists of "krill"
(primarily small crustaceans)