The Food and Feeding Habits of the Sperm Whales (Physeter Catodon L.) Taken off the West Coast of Iceland

Previous studies on the diet of sperm whales have shown that their principal food is squid. In the summer of 1967 the stomach contents of 57 male sperm whales, caught off the west coast of Iceland, were examined. Data from these stomachs provide a complete contrast to records from other parts of the world in that the dominant food of these whales was fish. The most important fish species in the diet were Cyclopterus lumpus, Sebastes sp., and Lophius piscatorius. All the fish specie eaten, with one exception, are found rmally on the sea-bed, and from a consideration of th depth distributions of thes fish, together with the positions at which the whales were caught, it is suggested that the Icelandic sperm whales feed o the sea bottom to depths of at least 500 m. Scars, assumed to be caused by squid, were found on the heads and bodies of 6 whales. Some of these scars are abnormally large, and others cannot be caused by any known species of north Atlantic squid.