A humpback whale set a record by traversing at least three oceans and more than 8,000 miles — most likely in search of a mate, according to a new study.
A team of scientists identified the adult male, which swam 8,106 miles from breeding grounds in Colombia in South America to breeding grounds in Zanzibar in Africa from 2013 to 2022.
The unusual odyssey is the longest recorded distance traveled by the species and is the subject of a study published Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science, potentially providing new insights into the migration patterns and behaviors of humpback whales.
The study suggests that mating and environmental factors could have influenced the whale’s long voyage.
According to the study, scientists looked at pictures on Happywhale, an online platform that collects photos of whale flukes — or tails — from scientists and members of the public from around the world. The platform uses artificial intelligence-powered photo-matching algorithms to help automatically identify the whales in submitted photos. Those matches were confirmed or rejected by data mangers, the study said.
The whale was first photographed in July 2013 off the coast of Colombia in the Pacific Ocean, where it was part of a “competitive group” that included seven humpbacks.
That same whale was photographed in 2022 in the southwest Indian Ocean off the coast of Zanzibar — 8,106 miles from where it was first spotted nine years earlier.
Researchers originally thought there had been some kind of error. “The immediate reaction was ‘This is a mistake. One of these photos is out of place,’” said Ted Cheeseman, co-founder of Happywhale and one of the study’s authors.
But it was confirmed to be the same whale. Scientists determined it was a male because he was competitively active in the mating pods he traveled with and because of a photo of its genital area, according to the study.
Humpback whales have one of the longest migration patterns of any mammal on the planet, according to the NOAA Fisheries, with some populations traveling 5,000 miles from tropical breeding grounds to colder waters in search of food.
What was remarkable about this whale’s journey was that it involved crossing multiple populations between where it started in South America to where it was most recently photographed in Africa, Cheeseman said. And it embarked on the journey as an adult.
“By the time humpback whales are adults, they’re usually in very fixed, consistent patterns,” Cheeseman said. “This whale did something totally different.”
Researchers have previously identified humpback whales that have swum astray of typical migration patterns. But the whale identified in the Royal Society Open Science study is unique in part for just how far it traveled, setting a record for the longest documented great-circle distance — the shortest path between two points.
The scientists can’t be sure why exactly the whale followed the path it did. The study suggests that climate change and other environmental changes may have played a role, as well as the search for food. The paper also considers that population growth could lead to increased competition among males, sending animals farther afield to search for food and mates.
In one sense, the research highlights just one individual whale moving across populations, which has been studied before, said Olaf Meynecke, a marine scientist and manager of the Whales and Climate research program at Griffith University in Australia who was not associated with the study.
“It would be more powerful to have multiple individuals, and not just looking at one individual whale,” Meynecke said.
It’s the bigger picture of having larger data sets that Meynecke said he finds more interesting, particularly with facial and fluke recognition technology.
“It shows how advanced our data collection is,” he said. “This automated fluke recognition really helps us to find individuals, and then understand their movement patterns a lot better.”
Understanding the behavior and movement patterns for any species is illuminating, but particularly with humpback whales, whose populations have rebounded in recent decades after being decimated by commercial whaling. But that comeback is happening amid other oceanic changes, Cheeseman added. “That sets up for surprises.”
Ultimately, the study also helps highlight the need to care about and protect the oceans.
“There is no humpback whale in the world that lives only within one nation’s waters,” Cheeseman said. “These are international waters and multinational waters, and we need to, as researchers and as a community who care about the oceans, we need to manage them accordingly. We need to protect them as international and connected waters.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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