Disclaimer: In this article I mention some "valid subspecies" of cetaceans named in recent decades. I acknowledge that their validity may be contentious to some folks in the field, as is a lot of cetacean taxonomy. I call them valid for the sake of brevity and to illustrate the fact that these types of cetaceans have been confirmed to exist - if not as subspecies, then at the very least as distinct regional types or colour morphs.
This large dolphin was seen by the author on several occasions in the eastern Gulf of Aden, north of the village Alula, west of Cape Guardafui which is the extreme NE point of Africa. Its appearance is quite different from any of the known species and it has therefore been given a separate paragraph.
Area: Eastern Gulf of Aden (Chart 7) to Socotra.
Sea temperature: 26 to 30° C.
Length: Estimated 20 to 24 feet (6-7 m).
Weight: Estimated about 4000 lbs (1800 kg).
Food: No records.
Teeth: No records.
Illustration: From life. The author and several other officers standing on 126 the bridge made sketches of the animal as it was swimming past in a flat calm sea. From these the painting was made. The colour was sepia brown and showed white starlike scars on the body. The dorsal fin, well above the surface was very prominent.
Special features: A rounded forehead, similar but not quite as round as in Globicephala (Pilot Whales). A little snout. The dorsal fin was estimated to be at least 2 feet high. At first encounter a school of 4 approached the ship head on and seeing the dorsal fins the author thought they were Orcinus orca (nr. 69). When they passed the ship at a distance of less than 50 yards just under the surface in the flat calm, clear sea, it was obvious that this was a different species. They were indifferent to the ship and neither changed course nor dived.
Speed: Cruising ± 4 knots.
Breath: Every 10 to 20 seconds.
Schools: 4 to 8, usually 6.
Biotope: Deep coastal waters in Gulf of Aden.
Immatures: Not observed.
Notes: These dolphins were seen in the area during crossings in April, May, June and September, usually swimming just under the surface with the dorsal fin above the water. One duty officer reported he observed them chasing a school of smaller dolphins, who tried to escape. There is, however, a possibility that both species were chasing the same prey. Attack and devouring of live whales by predators in this area was witnessed by at least two colleagues of the author, who could not identify the species, however. One of the victims was a Sperm Whale.
- Field Guide of Whales and Dolphins, 1971, pages 126-127
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| Mörzer Bruyns' range map for the Alula Whale (the single dark rectangle above the horn of Africa, marked 70) |
For me, the Alula Whale is one of the most compelling cases of “paper whales” for several key reasons I’ll expand on further down. I don’t necessarily want to feed into unfounded whale cryptid conspiracy theories, but there’s several interesting elements to this case that I’ve never seen brought up before.
The claim is bold – in the not so distant past of the 1960s (I’m guessing - the exact dates of the sightings are not given), a captain spotted what he believed to be a new, undocumented species of whale, and sketched and later painted what he saw. The whale was an Odontocete, the size and overall shape of a Killer Whale, but overall a sepia brown colour with star-like scars or spots. The whale was spotted in the Gulf of Aden, the gulf of sea right above the horn of Africa on its eastern coast. The whale was named after the Somali town of Alula (ah-LOO-lah) near where it was first spotted.
This claim was made by one Capt. Willem Fredrik Jacob Mörzer Bruyns, a Dutch naval captain born in 1913. WORTH NOTING: Bruyns also had a son with the exact same name as him, Willem Fredrik Jacob Mörzer Bruyns Jr. born 1943. I just want to clarify that cuz you’d assume a man with a name that unique would be easy to research but no, if you do additional research you have to be careful not to accidentally confuse him with his son. Also it appears Bruyns Jr. is the main editor on his own Wikipedia page which seems like a conflict of interest to me but I don’t feel the need to complain, a guy needs hobbies. From here on out I’ll call Bruyns Sr. “Mörzer Bruyns”.
Mörzer Bruyns was a well traveled captain, and in my opinion, a fairly skilled observationist and artist. The back cover of Field Guide of Whales and Dolphins offers a nice concise biography which I’ll just share verbatim:
“Willem Fredrik Jacob Mörzer Bruyns was born on the 21st of Febuary, 1913, in Bussum, Netherlands, of a seafaring family. It was not surprising therefore that after High School he attended the Nautical College (Kweekschool voor de Zeevaart) in Amsterdam which he finished in 1931 and then joined the same company as his father and grandfather.
From his early youth he evinced the greatest interest in natural history, especially that of whales, dolphins and seabirds.
He joined The Royal Netherlands Navy in 1934 as a reserve officer. During World War II he served in H. Neth. M. Submarines in Great Britain and Australia and returned after an absence of eight years as a submarine commander. Afterwards he rejoined the Merchant Navy and was appointed captain in 1951.
In 1963 he was given command of the flagship of the company; several times he as had the honour of representing the Merchant Navy in an official capacity.
During his years at sea he has made such a reputation for himself as an authority on whales, dolphins and seabirds that specialists in this field from all over the world have turned to him for information.”
I can only assume publishing his own original illustrated guide on whales was merely a small side quest in an extremely fascinating career. Worth noting, however, despite all his practical experience, Mörzer Bruyns was not formally educated in biology. He admits this readily in the book’s introduction (p.7), which starts the field guide off somewhat unconventionally – “Although the contents are based on careful observation and information from many zoological publications, this guide makes no claim to be a scientific work. The author is no professional zoologist.” The book’s foreword is written by Peter Scott, then (1971) chairman and 1st vice president of the WWF. Scott similarly notes
“As a professional sailor the author must be regarded as an amateur zoologist, but it seems likely that no other living man has so much first-hand experience of so many species of Cetaceans in the wild state. Writing from this basis of personal experience, Captain Mörzer Bruyns has made a number of new judgements about the relationships of the group which are somewhat unorthodox and may not be acceptable to all Cetologists, but which may well stimulate thought, discussion, and the further study which is so badly needed.”
This sets the stage for an interesting field guide. If you’re like me and have read countless post-1990s cetacean field guides, you’re probably somewhat familiar with most of the roughly 90 currently accepted species of whales and dolphins. However, by my own count, Mörzer Bruyn’s book contains 27 unique unconfirmed species. Some of these species have been matched with previously unconfirmed/dismissed scientific names put forward by earlier scientists, while others, the ones with no scientific names, are based solely on Mörzer Bruyns’ own observations and occasionally the word of local fishermen and seafarers that Mörzer Bruyns spoke with. Among these is the Alula Whale, which remains unconfirmed. However, interestingly, a couple of Mörzer Bruyns’ misbegotten species HAVE been confirmed.
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| All the unique whales Bruyns mentioned in his book, some of which are now considered valid subspecies. |
Where he got it right
It would be easy to dismiss Capt. Bruyns as perhaps another Quoy & Gaimard, eager to describe new species but having descriptions so vague, imprecise and singular that the lack of evidence calls their worth into question, but many of Bruyns' whales do align with other reports, with the author himself seeking these corroborating reports out. However, while many of these resurrected names have not been considered much further in publications beyond Bruyns’ book, a couple have.
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| Mörzer Bruyns' illustration of the "Red Bellied Dolphin", Delphinus roseiventris |
The Red Bellied Dolphin, described on page 67, is described as a small, 4ft long dolphin with overall dark grey colouration and, ironically, a yellowish belly. Bruyns paints it similarly based on dolphins he observed around Sulawesi (Celebes Island). He attaches the scientific name Delphinus roseiventris to it, a name+species first proposed by A. J. Wagner in 1846
In a 1999 paper, William F. Perrin resurrected this old name and confirmed that Mörzer Bruyns did identify, at the very least, a distinct subspecies – the Dwarf Spinner Dolphin, Stenella longirostris roseiventris.
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| The Dwarf Spinner Dolphin, Stenella longirostris roseiventris |
It's interesting that we now have a photograph of this once dubious subspecies that we can use to gauge Bruyns’ margin of accuracy. And I know what this sounds like; I’m not suggesting that just because the Red Bellied Dolphin is real that the Alula Whale must also be real, I just want to give the author+artist credit where it’s due.
Mörzer Bruyns also accurately illustrates the truei-type Dall's Porpoise, now considered a subspecies by some (Phocoenoides dalli truei), as well as the "Gulf of Panama Spotted Dolphin" and "Little Bottlenosed Dolphin", also now considered subspecies (Stenella attenuata graffmani and Tursiops truncatus nuuanu). The legitimacy of the "Speckled Dolphin", Sousa lentiginosa, and "Borneo White Dolphin", Sousa borneensis, are currently still under debate. I made a chart of all the unique species Mörzer Bruyns described in his book on the cryptid wiki.
Second sighting
Another element that makes the Alula Whale compelling is that it has been reported a second time, several years later, by an unrelated observer. Most of the cases I cover are peculiar species only seen once, but in the case of the Alula Whale, an additional sighting arose in 1987, 16 years after the publishing of Mörzer Bruyns’ book.
On May 8, 1987, Mr. A. Tibbot, 2nd Officer of the ship ACT 1, spotted what he identified as an Alula Whale at 2°09'00"S 62°28'00"E, at the point where the Arabian Sea transitions into the larger Indian Ocean. This sighting was reported in Volume 58 (April 1988) of TheMarine Observer. The singular whale in this sighting was described as dark brown with a prominent dorsal fin, but no star-shaped markings were mentioned. I can only assume Mr. Tibbot had a copy of Mörzer Bruyns’ field guide on hand that he used to identify the whale, and a footnote following the report notes that the Alula Whale “has not been recognized scientifically”.
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| The 1987 sighting |
Scientific name
While Mörzer Bruyns occasionally reached back into history and resurrected old names that he thought corresponded with his sightings, he did not take the liberty of giving formal names to any of his own personal discoveries. He posits the possible genus of these individuals, but nothing beyond that, which is a lot more restraint than I would have shown if I had the opportunity to claim several new species.
Donald S. Heintzelman included the Alula Whale in his own field guide in 1981, A World Guide to Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises, where he gave it a scientific name – Orcinus mörzer-bruynsus. Cetologist Tom Jefferson, in his 2021 paper, amended this suggested name to Orcinus moerzerbruynsus, but claims the name is not available, listing the species alongside other synonyms for Orcinus orca (p.16). In a 2023 blog entry, Tyler Greenfield reassessed this name and came to the conclusion that the proper spelling of the name should be Orcinus morzerbruynsus, and that the name is available and would be the one used if the species turned out to be real.
I’d recommend reading Tyler’s own blog entry on this species for his full explanation
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| The Alula Whale at the top of a checklist in Heintzelman's field guide |
Back to the whale itself
One thing I’d like to point out is how much the Alula Whale is compared to the Killer Whale. In all fairness, Mörzer Bruyns does this himself, categorizing it with the Killer Whale and alternatively calling it the Alula Killer. However, one detail artists often get wrong is the dorsal fin; Mörzer Bruyns describes the dorsal fin as prominent, but only 2ft high. He does not observe any obvious sexually dimorphic traits and does not posit that the species has any, such as the 6ft tall dorsal fin seen in male Killer Whales. All the observed Alula Whales appear to resemble female Killer Whales in terms of their silhouette and dorsal fin size.
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| Female Killer Whale |
I’ve seen a few theories about the Alula Whale, none of which dig particularly deep, but one of the main theories is that the Alula Whales were just Killer Whales whose skin appears brown due to the buildup of diatoms, a condition often seen in the Type B Killer Whales of Antarctica. However, this happens specifically because Antarctic Killer Whales shed their skin more gradually than Killer Whales in warmer waters, allowing for the diatoms to build up. Killer Whales in the Arabian Sea would not face this problem. And Pilot Whales are also not a likely explanation, seeing as neither of the two species live near the Arabian Sea or Indian Ocean.
I have a new theory – Beaked Whales.
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| Cuvier’s Beaked Whale |
Beaked Whales are admittedly my explanation for a couple of weird whale sightings, they’re easy to blame since their colouration is not well documented, highly variable, and the whales themselves are seldom spotted. But the description of a sepia brown whale with light spots fits very well with Cuvier’s Beaked Whale and Blaineville’s Beaked Whale. While not all Cuvier’s Beaked Whales are spotted, the images you can find of spotted ones look really damn close to Bruyns’ description and illustration of the Alula Whale. Cuvier’s Beaked Whales also reach a similar size as the Alula Whale.
The one hole in this theory is that Mörzer Bruyns’ book has an entry for Cuvier’s Beaked Whale, which he treats as entirely separate from the Alula Whale. However, Bruyns himself notes that “The brown colours occur mostly in the Indian Ocean and these were chosen for the illustration.” He also describes them as being similarly indifferent to ships.
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| Mörzer Bruyns' illustration of Cuvier's Beaked Whale |
In conclusion, while he was not himself a zoologist, I feel like Capt. Mörzer Bruyns’ contribution to the world of whales should not be immediately disregarded. While catalogues of whale species have existed before this one, many were simply that – catalogues describing species but lacking any illustrations, or having very few, and not specifically tailored for use in the field or by laypeople. Bruyns did all the illustrations himself and presents them in colour at the end of the book, easy to skim through if a whale watcher were trying to identify a species. He also provides a series of range maps, illustrating the range of each species he mentions. The Alula Whale’s range is a tiny dark mark near the tip of the horn of Africa, confined to a couple sightings at the time. And while many of the species remain dubious, a few are still currently being debated, and might become recognized in the future. Cetaceans are an incredibly variable group of animals and their species have never been quite as distinct as modern field guides make them out to be, and while perhaps a polka-dotted Killer Whale is a bit far out, I feel like we should stay open to the idea that there may be many more species yet to be named.
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Bonus stuff
The Alula Whale was technically the first whale I drew for this series back in January 2023, long before I started working on others, but I did this based on descriptions I found in wikis and I didn’t read the original source, so it’s anatomically all over the place and has that over-exaggerated dorsal fin. However, even back then I suspected that maybe the whale was a misidentified Beaked Whale of some sort, which influenced the design.
While looking into the Dwarf Spinner Dolphin for this article, I came across what is so far the only example I’ve seen of cetacean taxidermy (in the 1999 paper I linked to earlier). This was just really interesting to me because I’ve only ever seen models and skeletons of cetaceans in museums, which I assumed was because they probably didn’t make very flattering taxidermy mounts.
Also, for those curious, the PC shortcut for ö is alt0246
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