The wandering male was among a pod of humpback whales photographed from a research vessel off Colombia’s Pacific coast in 2013.
It was later identified in similar waters in 2017 and off the coast of Zanzibar in 2022.
Scientists said the sightings were separated by a great circle distance of 13,046 kilometers, which is the minimum distance the whale could have taken, but it was likely much longer.
Because the Earth is a sphere, the shortest path between two points is represented by the great circle distance, which is equivalent to the arc connecting two points on the sphere.
The paper’s findings are based on hundreds of thousands of whale photos posted by researchers, whale watchers and the public on the citizen science website happywhale.com.
The database uses artificial intelligence to match the individual shapes and patterns of humpback whale tails, or flukes, thereby mapping humpback whale movements around the world.
The research is published in the Royal Society Open Science journal.external.
Find out more about humpback whales in Secrets of the Antarctic Giants on BBC iPlayer.
