One male humpback whale traveled across at least three oceans in search of a mate, proving that there's no distance too far when it comes to romance.
According to scientists, the whale's journey is the longest great-circle distance between two sightings ever documented for the species.
Great-circle distance is the shortest distance between two points on the spherical surface of the Earth. The whale swam from off the coast of Colombia in the eastern Pacific Ocean to the coast of Zanzibar in the southwest Indian Ocean.
It traveled 8,106 miles across the globe. During its journey, the whale may have met up with humpback whale populations in the Atlantic Ocean.
"This was a very exciting find, the kind of discovery where our first response was that there must be some error," said Ted Cheeseman, a co-author of the study and a doctoral student at Southern Cross University in Australia.
Aside from the mind-boggling distance traveled by the whale, one of the most important findings was that the whale stopped to visit multiple humpback whale populations. It explored much farther than any other known humpback whale.
Typically, humpback whales stick to consistent migration patterns. They move between feeding grounds in cold waters near the poles and breeding grounds closer to the tropics.
Every year, they are known to swim more than 5,000 miles in the north-south direction, but they don't usually travel very far in the east-west direction or mingle with other humpback whale populations.
The whale's journey revealed that humpback whale migrations are more flexible than previously thought. Similar migrations have been observed before, but the male in the new study broke the distance record while traveling to and from breeding areas.
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The previous record was set by a female humpback whale that swam 6,100 miles from Brazil to Madagascar between 1999 and 2001.
"We've been able to document novel behavior which provides important insight into [humpback whales'] ecology," said Ekaterina Kalashnikova, the lead author of the study and a biologist at the Tanzania Cetaceans Program and the Barazuto Center for Scientific Studies in Mozambique.
They discovered the male whale's travels through photographs that were taken between 2013 and 2022. The images showed the same male in two locations off Colombia's coast. He was spotted again five years later on the Zanzibar Channel.
Each time, he was with a competitive group, which is a group with a female that is closely guarded by a male and other males compete to mate with her. The male humpback whale's motivation for traveling so far was likely for reproductive purposes.
Visiting members of another breeding population would boost his chances of reproducing. Other reasons for the whale's amazing adventure are climate change and environmental shifts that impact the food supply.