Humpback Whale Swims a Record Distance
I had little knowledge that whales traveled extremely long distances, and found this article to be eye-opening and very interesting. Among the many species of whales, Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are known to have the longest migration distances. The article I read detailed a unique single female humpback whale that travelled more than 9800 kilometers from a breeding area in Brazil to those in Madagascar.
This whale’s journey was recorded by a biologist at the College of the Atlantic named Peter Stevick and the finding is published in the journal Biology Letters. His team recorded that this particular whale’s journey was 400 kilometers farther than the previous record distance. This whale was first seen off the coast of Brazil, where researchers captured an image of its tail fluke and took skin-biopsy samples. In 2001, this same whale was photographed by a tourist on a whale-watch boat near Madagascar. Furthermore, there were other noteworthy unique details about the journey that intrigued Stevick and his research team. When humpbacks travel, they alternate between high latitude feeding areas and low latitude breeding grounds while keeping the longitude more constant. This humpback did almost the exact opposite, spanning 90 degrees of longitude while crossing several different breeding zones. Also, the farthest distances traveled are usually recorded by the males, because females remain attached to their respective breeding sites.
The intriguing part of this article is that the reasons behind this humpback whale are unexplainable. The female could have been responding to distant calls, seeking out new breeding grounds or simply have been wandering astray. Although humpback whales are thought of as being very well studied, surprises such as this article leave scientists with a lot of questions about the behavior of this species. This article is one small example of how little knowledge humans have about the world’s biggest mammal.
Posted by Ahmed Sandakli (3)
This article keeps popping up on my Yahoo front page, but I hadn't read it yet. Humpbacks are pretty impressive travelers. Do we know how they are able to navigate such long distances?
ReplyDelete(Above posted by Dana Mirsky)
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I wonder if there is a way to test if we could alter the whales migration by using fake humpback whale calls.
ReplyDeletePosted by Charles Carville
Wow, this whale is very strange! I hope researchers can figure out why she is acting out of the ordinary. Do they know where she is now? Has she continued her travels?
ReplyDeletePosted by Katie Kalutkiewicz
This is very cool. Do you know what was special about the tail fluke? Did they only figure out she swam that far just by observing her location from the pictures...or was she possibly tagged? The scientific name should have been italicized. Also, maybe a conversion to miles would've been more appropriate. Its a little hard to get a sense of how far that is, although I am assuming very far.
ReplyDelete-Katie Cyr
Whales are definitely one of the most fascinating sea creatures. I mean to even imagine how big they are, they must need a whole lot of work just to maintain their basic survival needs. Maybe the whale was traveling around in search of food all across the oceans, who knows!
ReplyDeleteLoba Alam
Currently little is known about whale migration because it is so difficult to map out their patterns because they generally travel long distances over very lengthy amount of time. Also, this makes it even more difficult to understand why doing so would be evolutionary beneficial if there are potential warm breeding and mating grounds closer than some of these distances that whales have been found to travel.
ReplyDeleteAhmed Sandakli