Humpback whale calf sightings further south than previously thought

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May 21, 2025
3 min read

Humpback whale calf sightings further south than previously thought

A study led by UNSW in Australia has found that humpback whales are being born further south than previously. Sightings have extended as far as Tasmania, more than 1,500 km out of the assumed calving areas.

“Historically, we believed that humpback whales migrating north from the nutrient-rich Southern Ocean were travelling to warmer, tropical waters such as the Great Barrier Reef to calve,” lead author Jane McPhee-Frew, a UNSW Sydney PhD candidate and whale watching skipper, said.

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The study includes over 200 sightings of humpback calves, including whale watching operators, citizen scientists, and government wildlife agencies. These are across an areas that extends from Queensland down to Tasmania and across to the South Island of New Zealand. The findings have challenged current beliefs about where the marine mammals give birth.

“I was working part-time as a skipper on a whale-watching boat in Newcastle when I first spotted a calf in the area,” McPhee-Frew said. “It seemed out of place. The calf was tiny, obviously brand new. What were they doing here? But none of my tourism colleagues seemed surprised. This sparked a conversation with my research colleagues, and we realised there was a gap between the scientific literature and the sightings.”

Once they began to investigate, reported sights were coming in from further and further south.

“Eventually, we just ran out of land to see them from,” she says. “So we don’t actually know where the limit is. But we had reports right to the bottom of Tassie [Tasmania], the southernmost points of Western Australia and to the South Island of New Zealand.”

This has suggested that humpback whales could have far more complex migration and breeding behaviours than previously assumed, revealing that we still have much to learn about them.

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