Overview
- Researchers analyzed more than 19,000 tail‑fluke photos collected from 1984 through 2025 to link two individual humpbacks seen in eastern Australia and off Brazil.
- The matched sightings establish record separations of about 14,200 kilometers for one whale and at least 15,100 kilometers for the other, the longest endpoints recorded for the species.
- The study, published this month in Royal Society Open Science, stresses that photos show only start and end points so the whales’ actual routes and how often they cross oceans remain unknown.
- Authors say the findings support the ‘Southern Ocean Exchange’ idea that Antarctic feeding grounds can mix whales from different basins, while also noting these two cases are rare in over 40 years of records.
- Citizen‑science platforms such as happywhale.com and automated image recognition were crucial to the discovery, and researchers say follow‑up work with tagging, genetics and systematic surveys is needed to test links to shifting krill and climate change.