Cephalorhynchus commersonii (Lacépède 1804)

[Delphinus] commersonii Lacépède 1804, Hist. Nat. Cetacees: 317.

Type Locality: Chile, "de la terre de Feu et dans le détroit de Magellan" (= Tierra del Fuego, Straits of Magellan).

Vernacular Names: Commerson's Dolphin.

Synonyms: Cephalorhynchus floweri (Moreno 1892) .

Distribution: Argentina to Chile: Gulf of San Matias, Argentina, to the Chilean side of the Straits of Magellan; South Shetland, Falkland and Kerguelen Isls. See Brownell and Praderi (1985) for further discussion. Rice (1998:101) recognized that the Falkland and Kerguelen Island populations are disjunct and suggested that they differ in subspecies, the Falkland population being C. c. commersonii and the Kerguelen population being C. c. subsp.

Conservation: CITES – Appendix II; IUCN – Data Deficient.

Discussion: Reviewed by Goodall et al. (1988).