A LIST OF THE MARINE MAMMALS OF THE WORLD 



by 



Victor B. Scheffer and Dale W. Rice 



Wildlife Biologists (Research) 



Bureau of Commercial Fisheries 



U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service 



Seattle, Washington 



INTRODUCTION 



Listed below are the living marine mammals of 

 the world: the sea otter, pinnipeds, sirenians, and 

 cetaceans. Certain animals descended from marine 

 ancestors but now living in inland waters are in- 

 cluded. (The Caspian and Baikal seals may have 

 been confined to inland waters since the origin of 

 the Phocidae from their presumed terrestrial an- 

 cestors (McLaren, I960).) A bibliography of 

 sources is given on page 9. 



Any attempt to classify the marine mammals is 

 beset with special difficulties arising from the 

 fact that they are poorly known. Some of them 

 live on the high seas, others on remote oceanic 

 islands and among polar ice fields. Some of the 

 sirenians and smaller cetaceans live in tropical 

 waters seldom visited by naturalists. The carcas- 

 ses of marine mammals are large-bodied, greasy, 

 and bloody, and often putrify before they are 

 brought to the attention of biologists. In general, 

 they are difficult and expensive to collect and to 

 preserve for study. As a result, many kinds are 

 known to science only from bones and fragments. 



For example, in 1952, Yamada collected a 

 strange 8-foot porpoise at Taiji, Japan. Upon dis- 

 section, it proved to be Feresa attenuata, known 

 up to then from two skulls which had lain for a 

 century in the British Museum. Only 6 years ago, 

 a new genus of dolphin (Lagenodelphis) was de- 

 scribed by Fraser (1956) on the basis of a skele- 

 ton recovered from a sea beach at Borneo; and in 



1937, a whale which proved to represent a remark- 

 able new genus (Tasmacetus) of beaked whale 

 washed ashore on New Zealand. In 1958, in the 

 collections of the U.S. National Museum and the 

 British Museum, there was apparently only one 

 skull— a broken one— of the ribbon seal (Ilistrio- 

 phoca fasciata), yet the population of this animal 

 in Bering and Okhotsk Seas must surely be num- 

 bered iatens of thousands. 



Thus, any list of the marine mammals, especi- 

 ally of the smaller cetaceans, can only be re- 

 garded as extremely provisional. Classification in 

 the following list is canied to the subspecific 

 level for pinnipeds and sirenians. Cetacean?, in 

 general, are too poorly known for subspecies to be 

 defined, but we have listed those proposed races 

 which appear to be valid. The sea otter is mono- 

 typic. Some, but not all, synonyms in current use 

 are shown. The arrangement of the pinnipeds fol- 

 lows Scheffer (1958); the arrangement of cetaceans 

 follows Rice (In Anderson and Jones, MS). 



Thedistributionof each species is shown briefly. 



[Note: Hershkovitz, 1961, has shown that the following 

 names take priority over those used in this list: 



Susu Lesson, 1828, for Platanista Wagler, 1830 



Tursiops nesamack Lac^p^de, 1804, for T. truncatus 

 Montagu, 1821 



Nodus Wagler, 1830, for Mesoplodon Gervais, 1850 



