2 humpback whales swam record-breaking distance, photos reveal

Humpback whales created a fascinating Fibonacci bubble spiral to catch fish in Antarctica 01:26

A pair of humpback whales swam between the eastern coasts of Australia and the breeding grounds of Brazil, according to a study published Wednesday. The journey distances are the greatest ever recorded.

Work by a team of international scientists used tens of thousands of images taken during whale stories to identify the two vast marine mammals and reveal they appeared on both sides of the world.

One was spotted in Queensland in 2007, then appeared near Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2019 – a distance across oceans of around 8,823 miles.

Another was seen off the coast of Bahia in Brazil before being spotted 22 years later in Hervey Bay, Australia, about 9,383 miles away, according to the study published in the Royal Society Open Science.

These images represent the longest distance ever seen between two images of the same humpback whale, the researchers said.

Such extensive journeys by the whales – which can be up to 55 feet long – are extremely rare, they added.

“Despite their rarity, these exchanges are important for the long-term health of whale populations,” said Stephanie Stack, a doctoral student at Griffith University and co-author of the report.

“Occasional individuals moving between distant breeding grounds can help maintain genetic diversity between populations,” she added.

They “can even transmit new song styles from one region to another – humpback whale songs are known to spread culturally across ocean basins, much like the musical tendencies of human populations.”

The study drew on almost 20,000 photographs collected between 1984 and 2025 across eastern Australia and Latin America, provided by scientists and citizen scientists. The photos were analyzed via an automated image recognition algorithm and the team was able to identify two humpback whales photographed in the two regions.

“This type of research highlights the value of citizen science,” Dr. Cristina Castro of the Pacific Whale Foundation said in a statement. “Each photo contributes to our understanding of whale biology and, in this case, uncovered one of the most extreme movements ever recorded.”

The researchers said the work also lends further credibility to a theory about humpback whale patterns known as “Southern Ocean Exchange.”

This hypothesis suggests that mammals sometimes travel to Antarctic feeding grounds and then take a different journey home, ending up in an entirely new breeding ground.

“Climate changes in the Southern Ocean, including changes in sea ice and the distribution of Antarctic krill (the whale’s main prey), could make such crossings more likely over time,” Griffith University said.

According to NOAA, primarily due to commercial whaling, humpback whales were listed as endangered in the United States in the 1970s, and a final moratorium on commercial whaling was placed in 1985. Currently, four of the population’s 14 distinct segments are still protected as endangered, and one is listed as threatened, according to NOAA.