180 



NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA 66 



There is a report in the Maryland Tidewater News (1953) that a 

 whale 60 feet in length was stranded at Ocean City, Worcester County, 

 in the spring of 1963 which probably was of this species. 



Fin-backed whales are more numerous off the Maryland coast than 

 these two stranding records would indicate. 



BLUE WHALE 

 Balaenoptera musculus (Linnaeus) 



[Balaena] musculm Linnaeus, Systema naturae, ed. 10, 1 : 76, 1758. 



Type locality. — ^Firth of Forth, Scotland (see Thomas, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 

 1911, pt 1, p. 156, 22 March 1911) . 



General distribution. — ^In the western North Atlantic, from Iceland and Green- 

 land south to Panama. 



Description. — ^This is the largest animal that ever lived, either on 

 land or in water. Adults sometimes reach lengths in excess of 100 feet, 

 the largest specimens usually being females. The color of this species 

 is slate blue over the whole body with the exception of the tip and 

 undersurf ace of the flippers, where pigmentation is absent. The blue 

 coloration may be modified by a pale mottling that is sometimes dif- 

 fused and sometimes concentrated in patches in different parts of the 

 body. There are between 80 and 100 ventral throat grooves and the 

 baleen in the mouth is jet black. 



Maryland records. — ^This species is known from Maryland by a sin- 

 gle specimen that grounded near Crisfield, Somerset County, in the 

 summer of 1876. The skeleton of this juvenile individual, identified by 

 G. S. Miller, Jr., is now in the museum of the Natural History Society 

 of Maryland in Baltimore. 



Remarks on Maryland Marine Mammals 



The above list is composed only of species that have stranded or been 

 observed off the Maryland coast. Many other species undoubtedly pass 

 through Maryland waters and will someday be recorded for the State. 

 Some, such as the short-finned blackfish {GloMcephala macrorhyncTia) 

 and the Atlantic blackfish {GloMcephala melaena)^ have stranded on 

 beaches only a few miles south of the Maryland State line. The follow- 

 ing is a list of species, presently unrecorded for the State, which prob- 

 ably occur at some time or other in Maryland waters : 



Harp seal, Phoca groenlandica Erxleben. 



Dense-beaked whale, Mesoplodon densirostris (Blainville) . 



Gulf Stream beaked whale, Mesoplodon europaeus (Gervais). 



Northern beaked whale, M esoplodon mirus True. 



Striped porpoise, Stenella coeruleoaThm (Meyen) . 



