Fin Whale - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

The fin whale has long been known to taxonomists. It was first described by Friderich Martens in 1675 and then again by Paul Dudley in 1725. The former description was used as the primary basis of the species Balaena physalus by Carl Linnaeus in 1758. In 1804, Bernard Germain de Lacépède reclassified the species as Balaenoptera rorqual, based on a specimen that had stranded on Île Sainte-Marguerite (Cannes, France) in 1798. In 1830, Louis Companyo described a specimen that had stranded near Saint-Cyprien, southern France, in 1828 as Balaena musculus. Most later authors followed him in using the specific name musculus, until Frederick W. True (1898) showed that it referred to the blue whale. In 1846, the British taxonomist John Edward Gray described a 16.7 m (55 ft) specimen from the Falkland Islands as Balaenoptera australis, while the German naturalist Hermann Burmeister in 1865 described a c. 15 m (50 ft) specimen found near Buenos Aires about thirty years earlier as Balaenoptera patachonicus. In 1903, the Romanian scientist Emil Racoviță placed all these designations into Balaenoptera physalus. The word "physalus" comes from the Greek word physa, meaning "blows", referring to the prominent blow of the species (as described by Martens : "They know the finn-fish by the... vehement blowing and spouting up of the water...").

Fin whales are rorquals, members of the family Balaenopteridae, which also includes the humpback whale, the blue whale, the Bryde's whale, the sei whale and the minke whale. The family diverged from the other baleen whales in the suborder Mysticeti as long ago as the middle Miocene, although it is not known when the members of these families further evolved into their own species.

As of 2006, there are two named subspecies, each with distinct physical features and vocalizations. The Northern fin whale, B. p. physalus (Linnaeus 1758), inhabits the North Atlantic, and the Southern fin whale, B. p. quoyi (Fischer 1829), occupies the Southern Ocean. Most experts consider the fin whales of the North Pacific to be a third, as yet unnamed subspecies. The three groups mix at most rarely.