Persian Gulf Bryde's whales, these once common residents can still can be seen in deeper marginal seas such as Gulf of Aden, Israel coasts, and in the Strait of Hormuz. Other species such as the critically endangered Arabian humpback whale, (also historically common in Gulf of Aden and increasingly sighted in the Red Sea since 2006, including in the Gulf of Aqaba), omura's whale, minke whale, and orca also swim into the gulf, while many other large species such as blue whale, sei, and sperm whales were once migrants into the Gulf of Oman and off the coasts in deeper waters, and
Persian Gulf naming dispute the head of the Persian Gulf. This coincided with the early mapmaking efforts of Gerard Mercator, whose 1541 terrestrial globe attempts to give the most up-to-date information, naming the gulf "Sinus Persicus, nunc Mare de Balsera" ("Persian Gulf, now Sea of Basra"). However, on his world map of 1569, the name is changed to "Mare di Mesendin" (after the peninsula Ra's Musandam, in modern-day Oman), while his rival Abraham Ortelius, for the world atlas of 1570, opted for "Mare El Catif, olim Sinus Persicus" (after the Arabian port of Al Qatif), but labelled the entrance to the gulf the present-day