Whales on a Remarkable Journey – Swam Halfway Around the World

Two humpback whales have proven that these enormous mammals can travel from one side of the globe to the other—if given enough time.

Using images of the whales’ tail fins, a team of researchers determined that a whale spotted off the coast of Queensland, Australia, in 2007 turned up near São Paulo, Brazil, in 2019—a distance of 14,200 kilometers.

Similarly, a whale from Bahia, Brazil, was tracked 22 years later 15,100 kilometers away, off Hervey Bay in Australia.

These are the longest distances ever recorded for humpback whales.

The fact that individual whales migrate between two distant mating grounds helps keep the population genetically diverse, says Stephanie Stack of Griffith University in Australia.

The whales may also bring new “songs” or “dialects” with them, according to the researchers.