10 years of satellite tagging of humpback whales off Brazil
Before this project was implemented, no one knew the routes whales used during their migration or where whales wintering off the eastern coast of South America went during their feeding season. This study discovered whales use a narrow (800km) migratory corridor and migrate to remote, offshore areas to the E-NE of the South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. These findings were subsequently verified by photo-identification and genotyping of individual whales.
This project has been conducted by Instituto Aqualie, a Brazilian non-profit organization, in collaboration with the Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (Brazil), the National Marine Mammal Laboratory (US), the Greenland Institute for Natural Resources (Denmark), the University of Washigton (US) and the Australian Marine Mammal Center (Australia).
Many thanks to Alexandre N Zerbini, Ph.D. (National Marine Mammal Laboratory), Phillip Clapham (NOAA) and Jooke Robbins, P.H.D. (Provincetown Centre for Coastal studies) for providing this information.
