The most frequently recorded cetaceans in France (GBIF data)

Which cetacean species are recorded most often in France? The chart above ranks 18 species by their number of georeferenced records in GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility), the largest biodiversity database in the world, for French territory, more than 241,000 records in all.

A ranking of visibility more than of abundance

The top three, harbour porpoise, common bottlenose dolphin and common dolphin, account on their own for most of the data. These are coastal species, close inshore and therefore easier to see, to photograph and to count when they strand. Conversely, offshore or inconspicuous species such as the false killer whale or the Atlantic white-sided dolphin appear very low down, not because they would be all but absent, but because they are rarely detected.

That is the main lesson of this kind of data: the number of records reflects first of all the survey effort and the detectability of the species, and not their actual abundance. For a population estimate, one has to turn to dedicated surveys such as SAMM or our demographic data.

How these data are produced

GBIF aggregates records from a wide variety of sources: scientific surveys, stranding networks (including the Observatoire Pelagis / RNE), citizen science platforms (iNaturalist, OBIS-SEAMAP) and museum collections. Each record is dated and geolocated, which makes the figure verifiable and reproducible through the public GBIF API.

This page complements our guide to open data on cetaceans in France. To find out where and when to see these species, see our map of cetaceans in France and the watching hotspots.

Cross-referencing GBIF with the official French surveys (data.gouv.fr)

GBIF mainly aggregates opportunistic records. In parallel, France runs standardised monitoring surveys whose data are published as open data by the Office français de la biodiversité (OFB) on data.gouv.fr, in the form of map layers (geoservices). Among the main ones:

• SAMM, Suivi Aérien de la Mégafaune Marine (Observatoire Pelagis): abundance flights over the mainland and overseas seaboards.
• MIGRATLANE, aerial megafauna census survey (Atlantic, Channel and North Sea).
• ELADOM, aerial megafauna monitoring off southern Finistère (2021-2024).
• GECC, monitoring of common bottlenose dolphins in the English Channel (2022-2023).
• CETIROISE, acoustic monitoring of marine mammals in the Parc naturel marin d’Iroise (2022).
• RNE / Pelagis, marine mammal strandings in the Parc naturel marin de l’estuaire de la Gironde et de la mer des Pertuis (1971-2016).

Unlike GBIF records, these datasets cannot be downloaded as a spreadsheet (CSV) but are consulted as geoservices (WFS/WMS). They are described in detail in our guide to open data on cetaceans in France. Together, GBIF (opportunistic) and these surveys (standardised) offer two complementary views of the presence of cetaceans in French waters.

A closer look at one data.gouv survey: aerial monitoring in the Parc d’Iroise

To move from the overview to concrete figures, we extracted the actual records of one of these surveys: the aerial monitoring of marine megafauna in the Parc naturel marin d’Iroise (OFB / SETEC, 2021-2022), available through the OFB geoservices listed on data.gouv.fr. In all, 15,126 records were logged along the flight transects.

Category recorded	Records
Seabirds	12,504
Human activities	1,759
Marine mammals	470
Other marine species	191
Land birds	127
Coastal birds	55
Miscellaneous (dead animals, other)	20
Total	15,126

Of the 470 marine mammal contacts, the vast majority are cetaceans: 462 sightings totalling 2,169 individuals. The breakdown by species (in number of individuals counted) is as follows:

Species	Individuals	Sightings
Common dolphin (Delphinus delphis)	1,305	268
Common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus)	245	26
Striped / common dolphin	117	29
Harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena)	76	29
Risso’s dolphin (Grampus griseus)	12	3
Common minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata)	2	2
Unidentified cetaceans	412	105
Cetacean total	2,169	462

Two lessons stand out. First, the common dolphin dominates the local ranking, whereas at national level (GBIF) it is the harbour porpoise that comes first: evidence that sighting frequency varies strongly with region and method. Second, close to a fifth of the cetaceans remain unidentified: from an aircraft, photo-interpretation rarely distinguishes a common dolphin from a striped dolphin, hence the “delphinid sp.” categories.

Data: Campagne aérienne de suivi de la mégafaune marine du Parc naturel marin d’Iroise (2021-2022), OFB / SETEC, published on data.gouv.fr and available through the OFB geoservices (wxs.ofb.fr). Data aggregated by us in June 2026; counts = number of individuals (“podsize” field).

Source: GBIF.org, Global Biodiversity Information Facility, occurrences for France, accessed in June 2026. The values change as contributions come in, and they are numbers of records, not population figures.