Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaeangliae): Facts and Song

What does a humpback whale look like?

The humpback has a bulky, dark body, black or dark gray above and mixed black and white below. Whales in the Southern Hemisphere tend to have more white. The head is covered with fist-sized bumps called tubercles, each holding a single sensitive hair, and a rounded knob often sits at the tip of the lower jaw. Between 14 and 35 deep grooves, the ventral pleats, run from the chin to the belly.

Its most striking feature is the pair of pectoral flippers, each up to about one-third of the body length, or roughly 5 m (16 ft). The front edges of the flippers are also lined with bumps, which help the whale turn tightly. The flippers range from all white to white only on the underside. The scientific name Megaptera means “giant wing”, while novaeangliae means “of New England”, where the species was regularly seen.

The common name comes from the way the whale arches its back as it dives, which lifts the small dorsal fin on a visible hump. Before a deep dive, a humpback often raises its tail flukes into the air. The underside of each fluke has a unique pattern of black, white and scars, and researchers use photos of these “tail prints” to identify tens of thousands of individual whales.

How big is a humpback whale?

Humpbacks are mid-sized among the great whales, much smaller than a blue whale but heavier for their length than most rorquals, the family of baleen whales with throat pleats. Females are usually 1–1.5 m (3–5 ft) longer than males.

Whaling records list a few humpbacks of about 17.4–18.6 m (57–61 ft), but researchers consider lengths much above 17 m (56 ft) unlikely and probably the result of poor measurement.

Where do humpback whales live?

Humpback whales are found in all major oceans, from the edge of the polar ice to the tropics, but are absent from some equatorial areas, the high Arctic and some enclosed seas. They prefer coastal waters and continental shelves and cross the open ocean on migration.

Most populations spend summer feeding in cold, productive waters at high latitudes and travel to warm, shallow tropical waters in winter to mate and give birth. Humpbacks have been recorded traveling about 8,000 km (5,000 mi) in one direction, and whales from Alaska can reach Hawaii, some 4,800 km (3,000 mi) away, in as little as 28 days. One male photographed off Colombia was later seen off Zanzibar, at least 13,000 km (8,000 mi) away. More records are in our list of the longest animal migrations.

In the North Atlantic, whales that winter in the Caribbean feed off New England, eastern Canada and western Greenland, while a smaller population that breeds around Cape Verde feeds off Iceland and Norway. In the North Pacific, humpbacks wintering off Hawaii, Mexico, Central America and Asia feed from California to Alaska and Russia. One unusual population in the Arabian Sea never migrates at all.

What do humpback whales eat?

Humpbacks are filter feeders that eat krill, copepods and small schooling fish such as herring, capelin, sand lance and mackerel. Like other rorquals, they gulp huge mouthfuls of water and prey, expanding their pleated throats, then push the water out through their baleen plates. Most feeding happens in summer and fall; on the breeding grounds they eat little and live on their blubber.

Humpbacks are inventive hunters. Their best-known method is the bubble net: one or more whales blow rings or spirals of bubbles that trap fish or krill, then surge upward through the middle with mouths open. Groups in Southeast Alaska coordinate their roles, and whales in the Gulf of Maine slap the water with their tails before blowing bubbles. Read more in What is bubble-net feeding?

Behavior: breaching and social life

Humpbacks are famous for surface activity. They breach, launching most or all of the body out of the water, and slap the surface with their flippers and tail flukes. A tagged juvenile humpback breached at least 69 times over two days. Research suggests these splashes work partly as signals that other whales can hear far away; see Why do whales breach?

Apart from mothers and calves, humpbacks rarely form lasting bonds. Groups usually stay together for days or weeks at most, but whales gather in large numbers where food is plentiful. They normally cruise at about 8–15 km/h (5–9 mph) and can sprint at about 27 km/h (17 mph). Most dives are fairly shallow, but tagged humpbacks have reached 616 m (2,021 ft).

Humpbacks also stand out for confronting orcas. They often charge killer whales that are attacking seals, sea lions or other whales’ calves, as described in Do humpback whales protect other animals from orcas?

The humpback whale’s song

Male humpbacks sing long, complex songs, mostly on the winter breeding grounds. A song is built from units, sounds a bit like musical notes, which form phrases and themes, and it typically lasts from about 4 to 33 minutes before it is repeated, sometimes for hours. All males in a population sing nearly the same song, which changes gradually over time, and new song types can spread from one population to the next across an ocean.

The purpose of the song is still debated, but it is almost certainly linked to mating, either to attract females, to deal with rival males, or both. Humpbacks also make many other sounds, including grunts, “whops” and feeding calls. The details are in Why do humpback whales sing?

Reproduction and life cycle

Humpbacks mate in winter on their tropical breeding grounds. Several males often follow a single female and compete fiercely for the position closest to her, charging, ramming and slashing with their tails. Both sexes mate with more than one partner.

Pregnancy lasts about 11–11.5 months, and the single calf is usually born in midwinter in warm, shallow water. The calf drinks rich milk, grows fast and travels with its mother to the feeding grounds in spring. It stays with her for up to about a year. Females usually give birth every 2–3 years, though a few calve in consecutive years. Humpbacks become sexually mature at roughly 4–15 years, depending on the population.

Estimates of lifespan range from about 50 to 90 years. NOAA Fisheries gives a typical lifespan of about 80–90 years. Ages are hard to measure in living whales, so scientists combine decades of photo identification with chemical clues from skin samples.

Predators and threats

Orcas are the main natural predator and mostly target calves, especially along migration routes off Western Australia. Many adult humpbacks carry rake-like tooth scars from such attacks. Large sharks occasionally kill sick, injured or very young humpbacks.

Today the main threats come from people. Entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with ships injure or kill many whales each year, and underwater noise from ships and industry can disturb feeding and communication. Warming seas are a newer concern: after a marine heatwave in the northeast Pacific in 2014–2016, calf numbers dropped sharply and North Pacific humpbacks declined by roughly a fifth.

Conservation status

Commercial whaling reduced humpbacks to a small fraction of their former numbers. More than 200,000 were killed in the Southern Hemisphere in the 20th century, and the Soviet Union illegally took over 48,000 while reporting only a few thousand. By the time the International Whaling Commission banned commercial humpback whaling in 1966, the world population may have fallen to around 5,000.

The recovery since then has been one of conservation’s great successes. The IUCN Red List now lists the humpback as Least Concern, with about 135,000 whales worldwide (around 84,000 mature) and an increasing trend. In 2016 the United States divided the species into 14 distinct populations, of which 4 remain endangered and 1 threatened. The isolated Arabian Sea population is thought to number fewer than about 100 whales.

Where to watch humpback whales

Humpbacks are the favorite species of whale watchers because they are active at the surface and often approach boats. In North America, good places include Stellwagen Bank and the Gulf of Maine, Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence in summer, Southeast Alaska and Monterey Bay from summer to fall, and Hawaii, Mexico and the Dominican Republic in winter. In Europe, humpbacks are seen off northern Iceland in summer, in the fjords of northern Norway in winter, and off the Azores in spring.

Responsible operators slow down, keep their distance and never chase whales. In U.S. waters around Alaska and Hawaii, boats must stay at least 100 yards (91 m) from humpbacks.