Despite the name, the pilot whale is a big dolphin: black, with a round, bulging head and a low, wide dorsal fin. It lives in close family groups and hunts squid hundreds of meters down, and in the Gulf of California its favorite prey is the Humboldt squid.
A large, black to dark brownish-gray dolphin with a big, bulbous melon and no visible beak. The dorsal fin sits about a third of the way back from the head and is low, broad-based and curved; on adult males it is very large and hooked. Look for a gray saddle behind the fin and a pale, anchor-shaped patch on the chest. Males are much bigger than females, with larger heads.
Short-finned pilot whales live in tropical and warm temperate oceans worldwide. Two forms are known in the Pacific, and only the larger “Shiho” form, with a rounder melon and a brighter saddle, is found in the Gulf of California and off the Pacific coast of the Baja peninsula; a genetic study has proposed treating the two forms as separate subspecies. They usually travel in groups of 25 to 50, built around related females who stay with their mothers for life, with about one adult male for every eight adult females. Their tight bonds are probably why pilot whales are often involved in mass strandings.
They feed mainly on squid, plus some octopus and fish, hunting at depths of 300 m (1,000 ft) or more. In the Gulf of California, Humboldt (jumbo) squid is a key prey, and the whales seem to follow its seasonal movements. Females can live to about 60 and males to about 45; a female has a calf every 5 to 8 years after a pregnancy of about 15 months.
Tags on 23 pilot whales off Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, showed them diving to around 1,000 m and sprinting at up to 9 m/s (about 20 mph) to catch large prey, all-or-nothing chases that earned them this nickname.
Source ↗Short-finned pilot whales go through menopause, something known in only a handful of animals, including humans, killer whales and belugas.
Source ↗Calves nurse for at least 2 years, and a female’s last calf may keep nursing for up to 15 years.
Source ↗In the Gulf of California, chemical signatures in skin samples from pilot whales showed that some groups were feeding on young Humboldt squid only 1 to 10 cm long (mantle length).
Source ↗A study of 2009–2018 sightings in the Gulf’s Midriff Islands found groups averaging 39 whales (5 to 120) and more encounters in the cold season, probably because the Humboldt squid they eat moves with the seasons.
Source ↗Off Baja and inside the Gulf of California, only the “Shiho” type of short-finned pilot whale is found, with a rounder head and brighter saddle than the “Naisa” type of the central and western Pacific.
Source ↗Pilot whales hunt in deep water, so off Los Cabos they are an occasional offshore sighting rather than an everyday one. Naturalists aboard an expedition ship recorded a group offshore of the East Cape, northeast of San José del Cabo (23°16′N, 109°23′W), traveling in a line, with two big males that came over to look at the ship.
Enjoy them from a distance: slow down, keep a steady course, never cut through or split a group, and don’t approach head-on. Never feed them or get in the water with them, and keep lines and lures clear while they’re around.
| Mexico (NOM-059) | Subject to special protection (Pr) |
|---|---|
| Ley General de Vida Silvestre, art. 60 Bis | No extractive use or possession of any marine mammal, except authorized research and conservation |
| Whale-watching rules (NOM-131) | Do not apply: despite the name “pilot whale”, NOM-131 covers only baleen whales and the sperm whale |
| CITES | Appendix II |
| IUCN Red List | Least Concern (2018) |
The false killer whale is also dark and beakless, but it is slimmer, with a small, tapered head, a dorsal fin in the middle of the back and a clear bump on the front edge of each flipper. Risso’s dolphin has a blunt head too, but it is pale and covered in scars, with a tall, sickle-shaped fin in the middle of the back.
Sometimes. They live over deep water, and naturalists have recorded them offshore northeast of San José del Cabo.
It’s a dolphin: it belongs to the dolphin family, Delphinidae, like the orca. “Whale” is just part of its common name.
Globally they are Least Concern on the IUCN Red List, but in Mexico they are subject to special protection (Pr) under NOM-059, and no marine mammal may be captured or kept.
Top illustration: Top Anglers. Photos: iNaturalist contributors, credited on each photo.
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