Abstract
A visual survey of cetaceans was carried out during a voyage from Singapore to Sri Lanka, through the Straits of Malacca, Andaman Sea and across the Bay of Bengal in the northern Indian Ocean in November/December 2012. Forty sightings of 11 cetacean species were recorded in 19 days of observation. Two mixed-species associations of interest were recorded. One of these contained four species of odontocetes in association with each other. The second group was of Indopacetus pacificus in association with Globicephala macrorhynchus and this while being the easternmost live sighting of I. pacificus in the northern Indian Ocean is also the first such mixed group in the Bay of Bengal.
Highlights
There have been few offshore cetacean surveys in Asia and there is a particular dearth of knowledge from the Bay of Bengal area of the northern Indian Ocean
Forty cetacean sightings were recorded over the survey period and all sightings were of odontocetes
Two mixed-species assemblages were recorded among the sightings and both occurred in the Bay of Bengal
Summary
There have been few offshore cetacean surveys in Asia and there is a particular dearth of knowledge from the Bay of Bengal area of the northern Indian Ocean. While some countries around the rim of the Indian Ocean have carried out surveys in coastal waters, dedicated offshore cetacean surveys have rarely been undertaken in this area. While dedicated cetacean surveys have been sparse throughout the northern Indian Ocean region (Ballance and Pitman 1998; De Boer, 2000) the only offshore records in the Bay of Bengal have. Between 20 November and 12 December 2012, a visual survey for cetaceans was carried out onboard sailing vessel Mir while transiting from Singapore to Sri Lanka. No cetacean surveys with published results have taken place in this passage area
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