Range Description

There have been many sightings at widespread locations in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans (Dalebout et al. 2003). The distribution is not fully known, but it appears to be limited to the Indo-Pacific region (Culik 2004). The collected specimens are from Australia, Somalia, South Africa, the Maldives, Kenya, the Philippines, Taiwan and Japan. These beaked whales are relatively infrequently seen in the eastern tropical Pacific and may be more common in the western Pacific. They also appear to be more common in the western Indian Ocean, especially around the Maldives archipelago (Anderson et al. 2006).