IMIS - Marine Research Groups

Eighteen extant species and four genera have confirmed records for Cuban EEZ waters. This includes 17 species of cetaceans (three baleen whales and 14 toothed whales) and one sirenian species. An additional 11 cetacean species and one extant pinniped species have been reported, but not confirmed, or may have the potential to occur in Cuban waters. Historical records of the Caribbean monk seal (Monachus tropicalis) are documented in Cuba; however, this species is now considered extinct. The only two species that are seen regularly and considered common in Cuban nearshore waters are the common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) and the West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus).

The temporal precision varies among records and most of the records do not have times (except those from satellite tag detections).

Some of the lat/long had to be estimated because exact locations were not available. For each record, there is a note describing the locations that are exact. As for the estimated lat/long, we estimated some of these just by finding the lat/long of the general location that was mentioned with the record. For some others, we georeferenced the coordinates from old figures of sightings/strandings since the raw data were not available.