A humpback whale breaches in the Sacramento River near Rio Vista, Calif., on May 27, 2007. File Photo by Aaron Kehoe/UPI | License Photo
Two humpback whales have made one of the longest known crossings ever documented between breeding areas, traveling between the waters off eastern Australia and Brazil.
The findings, published in The Royal Society on May 20, show how researchers used decades of whale photographs to identify two humpbacks that moved between breeding grounds separated by more than 9,000 miles.
Instead of using real-time GPS tracking, researchers analyzed images of over 19,000 whales since 1984 and found two that have swum between the southwestern Pacific and the southern Atlantic oceans.
"The actual routes connecting these locations remain unknown," researchers said.
