The Humpback Whales’ Great Migration

The migratory nature of humpback whale is one of their key characteristics. Humpbacks spend their summer months in high latitudes feeding in cooler, nutrient-rich waters and then perform one of the longest known animal migrations on earth, traveling thousands of miles to warmer subtropical and tropical waters at lower latitudes to mate and calve in their preferred breeding grounds. Humpback whales exhibit feeding-site and breeding-site fidelity, which means that return to the same specific feeding and breeding areas each season and it is the reason we find them here in the warm waters of the Dominican Republic every winter.

The whales that visit the Silver Bank are North Atlantic humpback whales, some of the same individual whales one might encounter on a whale watching cruise to the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary off Massachusetts; the Gulf of Maine and the Bay of Fundy; the waters of Newfoundland and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence; Iceland; Greenland and points further north. In fact, there have been several instances where individual whales or mother/calf pairs sighted and photographed on the Silver Bank by Conscious Breath Adventures and our guests have been re-sighted on their feeding grounds later that year. Supporting these photo-ID efforts, to better understand the population dynamics of the whales, is an important part of our research and conservation effort.