In 2010, the marine ecologist Peter Stevick, from the College of the Atlantic, reported in a study published in the journal Biology letters the case of a humpback whale ( Megaptera novaeangliae) that traveled 9,800 km, between the coast of Brazil and Madagascar .
It was the longest distance traveled by a mammal during a migration. Now, new research coordinated by Ladd Irvine of Oregon State University has revealed that a female western North Pacific gray whale ( Eschrichtius robustus ) has broken that record.
In an essay in the same publication, Irvine explains that the cetacean, which has been named Varvara , was tagged on the Russian island of Sakhalin, in the Sea of Okhotsk, in 2011. In this way it could be known that it crossed the ocean and followed the coast of Canada and the United States until reaching the waters of Baja California , where these animals mate and give birth to their calves.
Irvine has calculated that it traveled 10,880 km in 69 days, which is the longest such journey on record to date. Then, the whale returned to the starting point via a more southerly route, which in total took it to travel more than 22,500 km, another record.
Varvara’s trip could also show that gray whale populations in the western Pacific, which are on the brink of extinction, are genetically intermingling with those in the eastern Pacific. These are recovering after decades of excessive hunting , but until now it was thought that they were kept separate from their counterparts in the west.
