Interbreeding area movement of an adult humpback whale between the East Pacific Ocean and Southwest Indian Ocean

Humpback whales undertake one of the longest known migrations of any mammal. While their migration route generally extends between latitudes, the breeding stocks are longitudinally separated and display high site fidelity to their feeding grounds. While there is an indication of certain breeding stocks overlapping with each other, the current information on the migration routes of humpback whales within the Southern Hemisphere limits our understanding on the extent of this exchange. Here, we present the longest documented great-circle distance between sightings on wintering grounds of two different Ocean basins of an adult male humpback whale between two breeding stocks in the eastern Pacific (stock G) and Southwest Indian Ocean (stock C). These two stocks were separated by a minimum of 120° longitude, and 13,046 km of a great-circle distance. These extreme distances movements demonstrate behavioural plasticity, which may play an important role in adaptation strategies to global environ..., The data have been collected on the dedicated vessel-based surveys in Colombia and Tanzania. Location, behaviour, group type, group size, spatial distribution, and photo-identification images were collected in all locations. Fluke images were uploaded to Happywhale.com a web-based cetacean photo-ID platform., , # Interbreeding area movement of an adult humpback whale between the East Pacific Ocean and Southwest Indian Ocean

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.bzkh189k2](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.bzkh189k2)

## Description of the data and file structure

The GIS coordinates for the encountered individual Humpback Whale (*Megaptera novaeangliae*) on a small boat surveys in Colombia and Zanzibar have been obtained along with the following data - species, country, date, coordinates, group size and group type. 

### Files and variables

#### File: Sighting\_Coordinates\_Colombia\_Zanzibar\_Data.xls

**Description: **  The dataset contains records of the humpback whale encountered on a dedicated vessel based surveys in the northern Colombian Pacific in 2013 and 2017, and in Southwest Indian Ocean in 2022, and consist of the 3 records of the same humpback whale individual, with indication of the country and date where and when it was encountered, as well as coordinates of each sighting, group size an...