An impressive 15,100 kilometres of ocean separated sightings of one very adventurous, or very lost, humpback whale more than two decades apart, with scientists calling it new record migration for the species.
Recognisable by their unique fluke - or tail - pattern, that whale and one other were recorded in rare sightings at breeding grounds both in eastern Australia and off the coast of Brazil.
One of the whales was first photographed of the coast of Bahia, Brazil in 2003, at the Abrolhos Bank - the country's main humpback whale nursery.
It was spotted again twenty-two years later, in September 2025, in Hervey Bay, north of Brisbane, 15,100km away.
The finding sets a new record for the greatest distances ever confirmed between sightings of an individual humpback whale anywhere in the world.
