Humpback whales can reach lengths of approximately 60 feet (18 meters) and weigh up to 40 tons (36 metric tons). (Photo courtesy of Mike Korostelev via Getty Images)
A new study has found that a male humpback whale crossed at least three oceans in search of a mate.
The scientists noted that the whale's journey was the longest great-circle route between two sightings ever recorded for the species (Megaptera novaeangliae). A great-circle arc is the shortest distance between two points on the Earth's surface, calculated on the planet's sphere.
The whale's journey began off the coast of Colombia in the eastern Pacific Ocean and ended off the coast of Zanzibar in the southwestern Indian Ocean, covering 8,106 miles (13,046 kilometers) across the planet, researchers say.
Study co-author Ted Cheeseman, a PhD student at Southern Cross University in Australia and director of Happywhale, the image database where the evidence for the study was collected, said the whale was likely moving east from Columbia, following prevailing currents in the Southern Ocean and may have visited groups of humpback whales in the Atlantic Ocean.
“It was a really exciting discovery, the kind of find that gave us our initial reaction: maybe there was some kind of mistake,” Cheeseman told Live Science in an email. In addition to the impressive distance, one of the key findings of the study was that the whale visited multiple populations of humpback whales along its route, exploring more remote locations than any other humpback whale known to science, Cheeseman added.
Humpback whales typically follow stable migratory patterns, moving between feeding grounds in cold waters near the poles and breeding areas closer to the tropics. Whales are known to travel more than 5,000 miles (8,000 km) each year in a north-south direction, but they do not make significant east-west movements and do not usually mix with other populations.
The journey documented in the new study shows that humpback whale migrations are more flexible than scientists previously thought. Although similar migrations have been documented before, including a female humpback whale that swam 6,100 miles (9,800 km) from Brazil to Madagascar between 1999 and 2001, the male in the new study set a new distance record as he moved from one breeding area to another.
The same humpback whale was spotted in
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