Longman's Beaked Whale (Indopacetus pacificus) in Fiji

Beaked whales (Ziphidae) are the second largest family of cetaceans with 23 currently recognized species, and the Longman's beaked whale (Indopacetus pacificus) is one of the least known globally (Reeves et al., 2003; Yamada et al., 2019). Longman's beaked whales occur in tropical waters from the western Indian Ocean to the eastern Pacific (Jefferson et al., 2015), with strandings in the Pacific reported from Hawaii, the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, and New Caledonia (Figure 1) (West et al., 2013; Garrigue et al., 2016; Acebes et al., 2019; Kobayashi et al., 2021). Here we report the first record of this species in Fiji.