Where in the World do Humpback Whales Travel to Spend Their Winters and Summers?

Humpbacks are amongst the most studied of all whales. They are faithful to their migration routes, winter breeding grounds and summer feeding areas, a regularity which facilitates monitoring worldwide.

The SPLASH Project (Structure of Population, Levels of Abundance and Status of Humpback Whales) has identified humpback feeding areas in the northern parts of the Pacific. These feeding grounds stretch from the southern Chukchi Sea to northern Japan to the west, and to southern California to the east (Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska, west coast of Canada). These populations breed mainly around the Hawaiian archipelago, which hosts one of the largest populations in the North Pacific, but also near the islands south of Japan and west of Mexico (Baja California, Revillagigedo Islands). Thanks to photo-identification, we tracked the 4830 km migration of a humpback which travelled from Alaska to the Hawaiian Islands in only 36 days, or 134 km per day at a speed of 5-6 km/h.

The YoNAH (Years of North Atlantic Humpbacks) and MoNAH (More North Atlantic Humpbacks) projects have tracked humpback whales in the Atlantic. The latter frequent feeding areas which extend from the Labrador Sea, Greenland Sea and Barents Sea to the Gulf of Maine and the west coast of Ireland (Gulf of St. Lawrence, Labrador and Newfoundland coasts, West Greenland, East Iceland and Norway). They breed in the warm waters of the Caribbean, the West Indies and Cape Verde (island nation off of West Africa). Although it had been believed that the population of the eastern Atlantic mostly frequented the Cape Verde Islands, it seems that some individuals do in fact travel to the Caribbean to reproduce. One of the longest migrations recorded: seven humpbacks, including a calf, leaving Costa Rica and travelling some 8300 km to their arrival point in the Antarctic.

Humpback whales in the southern hemisphere patronize the rich waters of the circumpolar regions of Antarctica to feed and then migrate to various breeding areas: Australia and islands of Oceania, the coasts of Madagascar and Gabon, as well as the Brazilian coasts in South America. The resident population of the Indian Ocean remains in the Arabian Sea, Gulf of Aden and the Bay of Bengal.

Learn more:

SPLASH Project

MoNAH Project

Atlantic humpback whale migration monitoring