There are still things in the natural world that have never been caught on video but True's Beaked Whales swimming underwater is no longer one of them.
Video shot three years ago was just released this week and shows a pod of the whales, some of the world's rarest, swimming just below the surface of the water.
Why have they never been caught on camera?
The Washington Post explains the hunt for them by researcher Natacha Aguilar de Soto:
She rarely finds anything. Beaked whales — a family of 22 cetacean species characterized by dolphinlike noses and missile-shaped bodies — are some of the most elusive animals on Earth. They dive deeper and longer than any other marine mammal and spend an estimated 92 percent of their lives far beneath the ocean surface. One species, the True's beaked whale, is so rare that only a handful of people have ever seen it alive.
“Imagine,” Aguilar de Soto said, “these are animals the size of elephants that we just can't find. They're a mystery.”
The video is the first shot of these whales in the wild. They are so elusive that scientists say we may never know how big their populations are, whether they are threatened, or many other things about them.
But for now, this:
