Dwarf sperm whales are deep-diving animals that spend almost their entire lives far offshore, so Texas’s 11 records almost certainly trace to Gulf of Mexico strandings or at-sea sightings, not the inland places listed here. Big Bend, Balcones Canyonlands, and Big Thicket are landlocked and have no connection to where this whale is actually found. It’s rarely seen alive at all; most of what’s known about the species anywhere comes from animals that washed ashore.
The monthly counts are scattered and low, one or two records in scattered months and nothing in most others, far too thin to suggest any real seasonal pattern. Texas ranks the species S1, critically imperiled, matching a fairly precarious global picture too, a small whale that’s hard to detect even where it does occur, let alone count.
Full species profile
