After all this time, it would be easy to assume that scientists have identified and become familiar with all the other creatures that roam this planet we call home.

But you’d be wrong for assuming this, with scientists estimating that around 86% of the Earth’s species remain undiscovered and undescribed – meaning that a huge number of species remain unknown.

So every time a new species is identified and described (incredibly, an average of around 40-50 every day) it’s quite exciting for scientists and animal-lovers alike.

And when a species is finally located in the wild, after being rumoured for decades, the thrill only increases.

That’s exactly what happened to scientists on the Pacific Storm research vessel, which was sailing along the Mexican coast back in June 2024.

Incredibly, as explained in an article in The Guardian, the whales that were spotted swimming alongside the ship were not the run-of-the-mill whales that the researchers had become quite accustomed to.

Instead, visual analysis and analysis of a tiny sample taken from one of the whales before they swam away told the researchers that they’d had a once-in-a-lifetime encounter. That’s because the whales that were swimming beside their ship were ginkgo-toothed beaked whales, which had never been spotted in the wild before.

It was a momentous occasion, as researcher Elizabeth Henderson explained to the newspaper:

“I can’t even describe the feeling because it was something that we had worked towards for so long. Everybody on the boat was cheering because we had it, we finally had it.”

But this wasn’t a random discovery for Henderson and her colleagues, who’d been searching for a different kind of never-spotted beaked whale, using underwater hydrophones and high-powered binoculars in their plight to identify and describe them.

Why are they so hard to spot? Well, because beaked whales spend most of their time deep in the ocean and, as a result, are very wary of boats. This means that, sadly, the majority of beaked whales have only been described from carcasses that have washed onto shorelines.

And this whale sighting came of something of a shock to researchers, since the rare instances of ginkgo-toothed beaked whales have been on Japanese coastlines, meaning that this discovery confirms that the elusive whales are also present in other parts of the Pacific Ocean, as recorded in their recent paper in the journal Marine Mammal Science.

This is important, since beaked whales are sensitive to sonar equipment used by the military, so awareness of their presence in waters means we can start to protect them in their own habitats.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read a story that reveals Earth’s priciest precious metal isn’t gold or platinum and costs over $10,000 an ounce!