A beaked whale that died when it beached in Subic, Zambales, last April (2010) belonged to a species that is not yet on the Philippine list of cetaceans.

The whale found in Sitio Matang-ib in Barangay Cawag, Subic, was a ginkgo-toothed beaked whale, a species that has never been documented before in the Philippine waters. It was initially misidentified as a Blainville’s beaked whale by workers of Ocean Adventure, a facility that keeps whales and dolphins in captivity. However when the stranding information was posted online, marine mammal experts took notice, which led to the correct species identification.

The ginkgo-toothed whale has long been suspected to occur in the Philippines, based on the known distribution of the species in tropical areas and warm temperate waters of the Indo-Pacific, including Indonesia, Taiwan and Japan but is one of the least known species of cetaceans in the world. Generally, deep divers they spend little time near the surface, one of the reasons why few have been observed in the wild. When found the whale was still alive but later sadly died.