Humpback Whales leaves their feeding grounds in Antarctica each winter, heading north to the warmer waters of the Great Barrier Reef to breed and give birth. They spend some months off the north-east coast of Australia before heading south again.
It is a steady progression that runs northward through May, June and July and in late July some whales begin moving south again. All the mating takes place off the Queensland coast. That’s where calves are conveived and usually born. In the most fundamental way that is their home. The motivation for going south to Antarctica is food and the whale migration is very orderly.
While east coast humpback numbers are now estimated to be around eleven thousand, the humpback population is far from fully recovered. There are many things that are going to impact on those numbers continuing to increase, including pollution in the food chain and the risk of entanglement.
Climate change could also have an impact on the whale habitat in the Great Barrier Reef and on the food supply in Antarctica. Meanwhile ongoing moves by Japan to for scientific whaling also continue to pose a serious risk to the recovering population, and now Korea has also indicated it might follow Japan’s lead.
Great work is being done by the
Oceania Project which is in it’s twentienth year. It involves extensive field research in Hervey Bay from August to October. The researchers spend a week at a time on a research boat in the bay, photographing recording and filming the humpbacks. Anyone wishing to join this project’s expeditions as paying interns can go to
www.scu.edu.au/whales or
www.oceania.org.au
