Sato's beaked whale is one of the poorly distinguished species in the genus Berardius. It was distinguished from Arnoux's and Baird's beaked whale in 2019 on the basis of mtDNA differences.^[4][5] It generally has a short beak (~4% body length). While other four-toothed whales are generally grey with long linear scars, kurotsuchi-kujira usually have few linear scars, so that the dark, smooth skin contrasts highly with round, white scars of about 5 cm diameter, most likely from cookiecutter shark bites.^[5] The common name for Berardius minimus is in recognition of Hal Sato, a Hokkaido-based researcher whose photographs of the whales helped to distinguish this species from other beaked whales (note the image credit in Figure 1 and Figure 2 from the Yamada et. al. paper ^[5]).^[6][7]

The species' distribution, based on genetic samples from strandings only, is believed to include the sea around Japan, the Russian Federation, and Alaska.^[1]

Although very little is known about the ecology and populations of Sato's beaked whale, the IUCN has assigned the species a classification of Near threatened based on its estimated low population numbers.^[1]