Where does the whale mirgate?

Answer 1

Whales travel to cold waters for feeding and they go to warmer waters to give birth. One of the most dramatic whales that visits the Gulf of Maine is the humpback whale, About 100 humpback whales arrive on Stellwagen Bank, a newly designated marine sanctuary off Massachusetts, in the spring to feed on slender, five-inch-long fish called sand launce.

The Dominican Republic has made these whales' birthing grounds on Silver Banks, just north of that Caribbean country, a marine sanctuary. After giving birth during the winter or early spring, mothers bring their calves to the rich feeding grounds of Stellwagen Bank or other parts of the Gulf of Maine.

• Southern right whale migration.

  Winter/Spring: During the winter and spring, they are found in their coastal mating and calving grounds. These lie mainly along the southern coasts of Africa, South America, and in the Great Australian Bight, as well as along the western coast of New Zealand.

  Summer: Southern right whales migrate to colder food-rich waters near Antarctica for the summer

• Blue whales:

  Winter: warm, low latitude tropical waters (breed and give birth)

  Summer: cooler, high latitude polar waters (feeding)

  Most blues are migratory and travel thousands of kilometers annually between their winter breeding grounds in warmer, low latitude waters around the tropics, where they mate and give birth, and their summer feeding grounds in the cooler, high latitude waters of either the Arctic and Antarctic.

  They then migrate back to the tropics segregated by sex and age, the older and pregnant whales migrating first, with the sexually immature whales bringing up the rear. Generally, the larger, older whales migrate the furthest north.

• Grey Whales

  The basic migration pattern follows that of most baleen whales, ie between: winter breeding grounds in low latitude, warm waters and summer feeding areas in higher latitudes, cool waters

  i) Western North Pacific This migrates north from winter calving grounds off the Korean Peninsula and Japan, to summer feeding grounds in the northern Okhotsk Sea.

  ii) Eastern North Pacific gray whales make a mammoth 20,000 km (12,400 mile) round trip between their southern breeding grounds off Baja California, Mexico and their northern feeding grounds off Alaska and the Beaufort Sea.

  April - November: Arctic feeding grounds

  [October - February: migrates south]

  December - April: Mexican breeding grounds

  [February - July: migrates north]

• Humpbacks

  Winter: warm, low latitude tropical waters (breed and give birth)

  Spring/Summer/Autumn: cooler, high latitude polar waters (feed)

  Most humpback whales make mammoth journeys every year between their feeding and breeding sites. Because seasons are reversed either side of the equator, Northern and Southern Hemisphere populations of humpbacks probably never meet; those in the north travel towards their breeding grounds in tropical waters as those in the south are travelling towards the pole to feed, and vice versa.

• Northern right whales They are not known to travel the huge distances that species such as humpbacks and grays do. Nonetheless, some make annual migrations between winter breeding and calving grounds in warmer southern waters, and summer feeding grounds in cooler waters.

  • Winter: Most females give birth in the coastal waters of Southeast USA, off the states of Florida and Georgia. However, males and non-calving females are rarely seen in this area and their whereabouts during the winter is not known.

  • Spring: In the spring, aggregations of northern rights can be seen in the Great South Channel, east of Cape Cod, and in Massachusetts Bay as they travel north to their summer grounds.

  • Summer/Autumn: During the summer and autumn, both sexes are found in the Bay of Fundy (between Maine in the USA and Nova Scotia in Canada), and in an area on the continental shelf, 50 km south of Nova Scotia. There is also thought to be at least one other summer/autumn habitat somewhere in the North Atlantic.

  Refer to link below