In an extraordinary feat, a humpback whale has been tracked making one of the longest migrations ever recorded, spanning a staggering 13,000 km. First spotted in the Pacific Ocean off Colombia in 2017, the whale resurfaced years later near Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean, BBC reported. This “extraordinary distance” is the longest recorded between sightings in different breeding areas for the species, scientists say.
Experts speculate that this epic voyage could be attributed to climate change’s impact on food availability or the whale’s quest to find a mate. Ekaterina Kalashnikova of the Tanzania Cetaceans Program said the feat was “truly impressive and unusual even for this highly migratory species”.
The latest humpback whale’s journey has been detailed in a paper published in the Royal Society journal. The motivations behind the whale’s extraordinary journey remain a mystery, but researchers have proposed several theories. They speculate that the whale’s epic exploration may be a response to environmental changes, such as shifts in ocean temperatures or currents. Alternatively, the whale may be searching for new sources of food or, in the case of a male whale, testing new mating strategies.
“This extreme distance movement demonstrates behavioural plasticity, which may play an important role in adaptation strategies to global environmental changes and perhaps be an evolved response to various pressures,” the authors wrote.
Notably, humpback whales are known to migrate annually, travelling up to 8,000 kilometres towards the poles to feed during the summer months. They then return to their breeding grounds for the winter. Typically, these whales follow consistent routes and revisit familiar locations. However, the east-west journey of over 13,000 kilometres, as seen in this instance, is extremely rare and unusual for humpback whales.
“While actual reasons are unknown, amongst the drivers, there might be global changes in the climate, extreme environmental events (that are more frequent nowadays), and evolutionary mechanisms of the species,” said Dr Kalashnikova.
Before this recent discovery, the longest recorded migration by longitudinal distance was made by a female humpback whale. It was initially spotted at a feeding ground near the Antarctic Peninsula and later appeared off Byron Bay in New South Wales, Australia, in 2022.
