https://doi.org/10.82144/317723f9 https://www.gbif.org/dataset/0e448783-fb63-4086-b02f-9d1ff4938999 https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/1540 https://obis.org/dataset/fda6d4a4-8d14-45bc-9b4c-24d89fd213ab Marina Costa Tethys Research Institute Primary contact marinza.costa@gmail.com www.tethys.org Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara Tethys Research Institute Secondary contact tethys@tethys.org www.tethys.org OBIS-SEAMAP Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab, Duke University

A328 LSRC building Durham NC 27708 US

seamap-contact@duke.edu https://seamap.env.duke.edu OBIS-SEAMAP Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab, Duke University

A328 LSRC building Durham NC 27708 US

seamap-contact@duke.edu https://seamap.env.duke.edu distributor Marina Costa Tethys Research Institute Primary contact marinza.costa@gmail.com www.tethys.org owner Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara Tethys Research Institute Secondary contact tethys@tethys.org www.tethys.org originator 2025-09-11 eng Original provider: Tethys Research Institute Dataset credits: Marina Costa, Amina Cesario, Maddalena Fumagalli & Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara, Tethys Research Institute Chris Smeenk Eritrea Project - Yohannes Mebrahtu IMMRAC Peter Rudolph Red Sea Dolphin Project - HEPCA Abstract: Based on a review of the literature, complemented by original observations at sea made by the authors during the past 34 years, the cetacean fauna in the Red Sea appears to be composed by a total of 16 species: three Mysticetes (Bryde’s whale, Balaenoptera edeni; Omura’s whale, B. omurai; and humpback whale, Megaptera novaeangliae) and 13 Odontocetes (dwarf sperm whale, Kogia sima; killer whale, Orcinus orca; false killer whale, Pseudorca crassidens; short-finned pilot whale, Globicephala macrorhynchus; Risso’s dolphin, Grampus griseus; Indian Ocean humpback dolphin, Sousa plumbea; rough-toothed dolphin, Steno bredanensis; Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin, Tursiops aduncus; common bottlenose dolphin, T. truncatus; pantropical spotted dolphin, Stenella attenuata; spinner dolphin, S. longirostris; striped dolphin, S. coeruleoalba; Indo-Pacific common dolphin, Delphinus delphis tropicalis). This review presents the very first documented and confirmed sightings of B. omurai, K. sima and S. bredanensis in the Red Sea. Of all the above species, however, only nine (Bryde’s whale, false killer whale, Risso’s dolphin, Indian Ocean humpback dolphin, Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin, common bottlenose dolphin, pantropical spotted dolphin, spinner dolphin, and Indo-Pacific common dolphin) appeared to occur regularly in the Red Sea, the remaining seven only occurring sporadically as vagrants from the Indian Ocean. Even regular species appeared not to be uniformly distributed throughout the Red Sea, e.g., with Indo-Pacific common dolphins mostly limited to the southern portion of the region, and the Gulf of Suez only hosting the two bottlenose dolphin species and Indian Ocean humpback dolphins. No convincing evidence was found of the Red Sea occurrence of two whale species mentioned in the literature: the common minke whale, Balaenoptera acutorostrata, and the sperm whale, Physeter macrocephalus. The absence from the region of deep diving species (e.g., Ziphiidae and the sperm whale) can be explained by the geomorphology of the Straits of Bab al Mandab, with its extended shallow sill likely to discourage incursions by such species into the Red Sea. The coordinated effort and the different expertise of the authors has contributed to amend previous mistakes and inaccuracies, verify and validate specimen identification, highlight features of relevance for species taxonomy and, most importantly, draw a fundamental baseline to inform conservation of cetaceans in the Red Sea. Occurrence GBIF Dataset Type Vocabulary: http://rs.gbif.org/vocabulary/gbif/dataset_type.xml Observation GBIF Dataset Subtype Vocabulary: http://rs.gbif.org/vocabulary/gbif/dataset_subtype.xml Marine Biology Visual sighting Marine Animal Survey Marine mammals Visual Sighting Vessel N/A Sighting records were collected from the data owners: Chris Smeenk Eritrea Project - Yohannes Mebrahtu Israel Marine Mammal Research & Assistance Center - IMMRAC Mia Elasar, Daphna Feingold, Oz Goffman, Nir Hadar, Dan Kerem, Aviad Scheinin Peter Rudolph Red Sea Dolphin Project - HEPCA This dataset incorporated the previously published dataset "IMMRAC marine mammal sightings from the Red Sea (http://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/1145)". Temporal resolution varies per record. Time values are not available. "tprecision" column is added to indicate the resolution. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 License. https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/1540 Oceans,Red Sea,Egypt,Sudan,Eritrea,Yemen,Saudi Arabia,Israel,Gulf,Suez,Aqaba 32.3 44.066667 31.166161 11.666667 1984-06-09 2017-01-01 Scientific names are based on the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS). genus Balaenoptera Baleen whales species Balaenoptera edeni Eden's whale species Balaenoptera omurai Omurai's whale subspecies Delphinus capensis tropicalis Indo-pacific common dolphin species Globicephala macrorhynchus Short-finned pilot whale species Grampus griseus Risso's dolphin species Megaptera novaeangliae Humpback whale species Orcinus orca Killer whale species Pseudorca crassidens False killer whale species Sousa chinensis Chinese white dolphin genus Stenella Spinner dolphins species Stenella attenuata Pantropical spotted dolphin species Stenella coeruleoalba Striped dolphin species Stenella longirostris Spinner dolphin genus Tursiops Bottlenose dolphins species Tursiops aduncus Indian ocean bottlenose dolphin species Tursiops truncatus Common bottlenose dolphin To release updated information about cetacean species in the Red Sea and review existing information from published and grey literature. annually Marina Costa Tethys Research Institute Primary contact marinza.costa@gmail.com www.tethys.org NA NA NA Marina Costa owner Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara originator NA zd_1540 2025-09-11T15:39:44-04:00 dataset Costa, M. and G. Notarbartolo di Sciara. 2017. Red Sea Cetacean Review - Sightings. Version 1.0.0. Dataset published in OBIS-SEAMAP. https://doi.org/10.82144/317723f9. Notarbartolo di Sciara G., Kerem D., Smeenk C., Rudolph P., Cesario A., Costa M., Elasar M., Feingold D., Fumagalli M., Goffman O., Hadar N., Mebrathu Y.T., Scheinin A. 2017. Cetaceans of the Red Sea. CMS Technical Series 3386p. OBIS-SEAMAP Dataset Page UTF-8 Interactive map https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/1540 FGDC Metadata UTF-8 XML https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/1540/fgdc EML Metadata UTF-8 XML https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/1540/eml OBIS-SEAMAP zd_1540 zd_1540