Minke whale (Fabricius, 1780). There is one synonym for "B. bonaerensis" - "B. huttoni" (Gray 1874). Writing in his 1998 classification, Rice recognized two of the subspecies of the common minke whale - "B. a. scammoni" (Scammon's minke whale) and a further taxonomically unnamed subspecies found in the Southern Hemisphere, the dwarf minke whale (first described by Best, 1985). On at least one occasion, an Antarctic minke whale has been confirmed migrating to the Arctic. In addition, at least two wild hybrids between a common minke whale and an Antarctic minke whale have been confirmed. The minke whales are the second smallest
Antarctic minke whale dark gray dorsally and clean white (occasionally light gray to gray) ventrally with a thin, dusky margin. Some small, dark gray "speckling" may be present on the body. Antarctic minkes lack the bright white, transverse "flipper band" of the common minke and the white "shoulder blaze" and bright white "flipper patch" (occupying the proximal two-thirds of the flipper) of the dwarf minke. Instead, their narrow, pointed flippers, about one-sixth to one-eighth of the total body length, are normally either a plain light gray with an almost white leading edge and a darker gray trailing edge or two-toned, with a thin