Noad et al., 2008:

"Humpback whales undertake annual migrations between high-latitude summer feeding areas and low-latitude winter breeding areas (Chittleborough, 1965; Dawbin, 1966). Until recently, the western South Pacific has been thought of as having one population of humpbacks, the Group V population, that summers in the Southern Ocean between 130 degrees E and 170 degrees W, migrating to various low-latitude coastal and island areas in the region during winter.

More recently, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) changed the nomenclature of the region to describe breeding stocks with east Australian whales named E1, New Caledonian and Tongan whales E2 and Cook Island and French Polynesian populations F (IWC 2006). While it is now considered that this area contains several populations that inter-mingle to a variable but probably small extent (Garrigue et al., 2000 & 2007), it is apparent that the largest stock or population of this meta-population migrates along the east coast of Australia.

Off the east coast of Australia, the winter breeding area is probably widely dispersed inside the Great Barrier Reef and the migration to and from these waters is along the eastern continental coastline.

Off the headlands of the southern coastline of Queensland the migratory corridor is narrow with most whales passing close to land (Bryden 1985; Paterson 1991; Brown 1996).

The migration of the humpback is often bimodal with an early peak in mid-June (for example see 2004 data in Fig. 5), and a later, larger peak centred around early July."

---

Citation and/or URL

Noad, M., Dunlop, R., Cato, D. & Paton, D. 2008, Abundance estimates of the east Australian humpback whale population: final report for the Commonwealth Department of the Environment, Heritage, Water and the Arts. University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

Spatial Coverage

South East Queensland

Temporal Coverage

2007

Update Frequency

Not applicable 

Other Information

None