That must really be something to ceta"see". <|:)~
1. Description
Adult males are dark grey but females are lighter with pale undersides. The teeth on the lower jaw are found towards the middle of the beak and erupt only in mature males. The longest female measured 4.9m, the longest male 4.7m (Ward 2001).
2. Distribution
Ginkgo-toothed whales are found in the tropical and warm temperate waters of the Indopacific; they have been recorded from Sri Lanka, the Strait of Malacca, Taiwan, Kyushu, the Pacific coast of Honshu, New South Wales, the Chatham Islands, southern California, the west coast of northern Baja California Sur, and the Galapagos Islands (Rice, 1998).
Palacios (1996) summarised that Mesoplodon ginkgodens is only known from 15 stranding records. Of these, eight are from the western North Pacific (Japan and Taiwan), three from the South Pacific (one from the Chatham Islands and two from Australia), and two from the Indian Ocean (Sri Lanka and Indonesia). The remaining two records are from the eastern North Pacific: a female stranded at Del Mar, California, U.S.A., in 1954 and a skull collected on 30 December 1980 at Playa Malarrimo, outside Laguna Ojo de Liebre (Scammon's Lagoon), Baja California, Mexico. Palacios (1996) documents an additional record of a specimen of M. ginkgodens from the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, eastern tropical Pacific. Furthermore, Anderson et al. (1999) report on recent strandings on the Maldives in the Indian Ocean. Baker and van Helden (1999) describe stranded specimens found on New Zealand beaches, but this was a mis-identified specimen of M. grayi (M. Dalebout, pers. comm.).
3. Population size
no entries.
4. Biology and Behaviour
The Ginkgo-toothed Beaked Whale is very poorly known. Nothing is known about its behavior, but it is likely to be unobtrusive. Probably Mesoplodon gingkodens occurs in small groups. The lack of scarring suggests little or no aggression between males; at least, the teeth are not involved in fights. Confusion is most likely with other beaked whales, such as Blainville's, Andrews' Hubbs', Stejneger's and Cuvier's Beaked Whales (Carwardine, 1995).
http://www.wcmc.org.uk/cms/reports/small_cetaceans/data/m_gingkodens/m_gingkodens.htm