Off the south-western coast of South African super groups of up to 200 humpback whales, Megaptera novaeangliae, have been aggregating in very atypical manner. Humpbacks are usually solitary, in pairs or part of small temporary groups and what makes this phenomenon even more uncommon is during this time they should be thousands of kilometres south feeding in the polar Antarctic.
Ken Findlay, the lead author of the study from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in South Africa, hypothesizes their shift in behaviour could be in response to changes in their prey. Humpback whale populations have continued to grow over the last decade , but why this is still needs to be teased apart. Determining the migration links, where these aggregating whales are coming from and how energetically beneficial suspending migration and feeding in this area is, are all very pertinent questions to this unusual behaviour.
Please see the PLOS link to the original study:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0172002
