The humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are gentle aquatic mammals that are known for their magical songs that can be heard thousands of miles through the world's oceans. Like migratory birds, these whales too have been known to migrate great distances from both poles to breed in tropical waters.
The scientists had known of this seasonal migration from the poles. However, what they did not know was the movement pattern these creatures adopted once they reached the breeding areas that extends from Costa Rica to Peru, covering a huge distance of 2,600 kilometers.
Since the humpback whales' travel path was along the non-straight coastline, it was difficult to chart their exact route merely by sightings of their unique fluke (the two characteristic lobes of the tail) and dorsal fin. From the point of view of their protection, it became important to track and understand this movement.
Two Smithsonian scientists, Hector M. Guzman and Fernando Félix took it upon themselves to tag 47 humpback whales with satellite transmitters to chart the movement pattern of the Southern Pacific population of humpbacks within their breeding areas. The study was funded by Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama's National Office of Science and Technology, the Candeo Fund at the International Community Foundation and the Whale Museum.
According to Phys.Org, in the first instance, 25 humpback whales were tagged in Panama and 22 in Ecuador between 2009 and 2015. These tags transmitted on an average of two weeks before the battery ran out, but a tag on a mother whale lasted 69 days, giving ample opportunity for scientists to chart her 6,000-kilometer route.
The whole exercise revealed the movements of 23 humpback mothers along with their newborn calves and 14 unsexed whales. The tagging was a thumping success was revealed by 7th Space that reported Félix as saying, "Thanks to new spatial models that were used to evaluate the movement of the whales, we could differentiate behaviors and gauge the speed of the whales during their reproductive and migratory periods."
The import of this tagging exercise was not lost on the scientific community. Guzman tells us of its importance, thus, "Our work fills an informational void: we've known these whales move between feeding areas and breeding areas, but we hadn't characterized their movements, and we couldn't exactly pinpoint the range of the breeding area."
