Humpback Whales: Fascinating Facts About These Majestic Marine Giants

Physical Characteristics of Humpback Whales

Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are baleen whales famed for their spectacular courting songs and displays. Humpback whales typically measure 12 to 16 meters (39 to 52 feet) in length and weigh around 36 metric tons (40 short tons). The upper surface of the body is black, with varying amounts of white below, and the throat and chest have approximately 30 large ventral grooves.

This cetacean is identifiable from other baleen whales by its long, slender flippers, which are around one-third the length of the body and scalloped on the forward edge. Humpbacks have huge knobs on their heads, jaws, and bodies, each of which is coupled with one or two hairs. The dorsal fin is tiny and located far back in the body.

Global Distribution and Migration Patterns

Humpback whales are found around the shores of all oceans, occasionally swimming close to shore, even into harbors and rivers. They make extensive migrations from polar feeding areas in the summer to tropical or subtropical breeding sites in the winter. The humpback whale’s diet consists of shrimp-like crustaceans known as krill, tiny fish, and plankton, which it strains from the water with its baleen.

Humpback whales feed via a unique process known as bubble netting, in which bubbles are pushed out as the whale swims in a spiral below a region of food-rich water. The curtain of bubbles confines the prey to a tiny area in the center of which one or more whales emerge.

The Language of Humpback Whales: Songs and Sounds

Humpback whales are the most talkative of all whales, producing a wide range of sounds, including moans, howls, groans, and snores. The whales put them together to create “songs” that last 5-35 minutes. The songs fluctuate between whale groups in different places and evolve gradually yet consistently from year to year.

Acrobatic Displays: Breaching and Diving Behaviors

Humpback whales are also among the most acrobatic cetaceans. It frequently breaches by leaping belly-up entirely out of the water, arching backward, and returning to the surface with a loud slapping sound. When starting a deep dive, the animal hunches its back and rolls steeply forward, lifting its tail out of the water and perpendicular to the ocean surface.

Conservation Status and Recovery Efforts

The humpback whale was once commercially lucrative, but its numbers were substantially reduced by overhunting in the early to mid-twentieth century. It has been protected worldwide from commercial whaling since the mid-1960s and many populations have grown. These population increases persuaded the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to downgrade the humpback whale’s status from endangered to vulnerable.

Relationship to Other Baleen Whales

The humpback whale is the only species in the Megaptera genus, however, it is linked to other rorquals in the Balaenopteridae family, which includes the blue whale, fin whale, and sei whale. The final part of the humpback’s species name is a Latin allusion to the New England colonies, where it was originally formally described.

Current Population and Regional Estimates

As of 2018, the IUCN Red List ranked the humpback whale as the least threatened, with a global population of approximately 135,000 whales, 84,000 of which are mature individuals, and a growing population trend.

Regional estimates are roughly 13,000 in the North Atlantic, 21,000 in the North Pacific, and 80,000 in the Southern Hemisphere. Only about 80 individuals remain of the isolated population in the Arabian Sea, which is thought about endangered. Humpback whale populations have mostly recovered from historic whaling, mainly in the North Pacific. As a result of these recovery efforts, the species’ threatened status has been reduced in the United States, Canada, and Australia. In Costa Rica, the Ballena Marine National Park was established to protect humpbacks.