An international team tracked the longest migration ever recorded for a male humpback whale. How did it manage that? An adult humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) began its journey from the Pacific coast of Colombia, traveling with seven other whales in July 2013. It completed the trek in August 2022 off the coast of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean. Researchers were astonished to find the whale had traveled more than 13,000 kilometers from its original observation point.
Humpback whales make the longest migrations of any marine mammal. Depending on the season, they move between tropical breeding grounds and colder feeding areas, sometimes covering about 8,000 kilometers. Most humpbacks migrate north to south or vice versa. But an east-to-west crossing of an ocean is unusual, IFLScience reported.
The researchers measured the distance as the shortest path between the two observation points — along the great-circle arc, accounting for the Earth’s spherical surface. That distance was the longest recorded along a great-circle arc and the first such record for a humpback whale. “It was an exciting discovery that we reacted to immediately; we even thought there might have been some mistake,” said study co-author Ted Chizmar.
So, why did the whale swim so far? The team considered a few possibilities. They suggested that warming oceans may have shifted krill — the whale’s primary food — away from its usual feeding areas, pushing the animal to travel farther in search of food. Another possibility is that the male was searching for new breeding grounds. Humpbacks typically show strong fidelity to established feeding territories, and only a few individuals move between them. Earlier studies suggest that females sometimes travel long distances, particularly when searching for younger males. The findings were published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
