Florida’s records for the melon-headed whale total just 14, almost all logged through GBIF rather than iNaturalist, and the most recent dates to July 2003. That gap of more than two decades says more about how rarely this deep-water species turns up near shore than about how many live offshore. It’s treated as native to Florida’s waters, and NatureServe hasn’t assigned the state a numeric rank.
Reports cluster in June and February, with six and five records out of the fourteen total. With numbers this small, that pattern likely reflects chance strandings or rare sightings rather than a real seasonal trend. Melon-headed whales travel far offshore in deep water, so most encounters near Florida probably go unrecorded.
