Scientific Literature: Searchable Database

Through collaboration by nearly all cetologists and many amateurs photographing whales in the North Atlantic Ocean, over 9,000 photographs of humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) flukes have been collected. As of 31 December 1986, 3,647 individual whales were represented in the collection. Over 1,100 photographically-verified resightings of individually-known humpbacks demonstrated the existence of at least four, and probably five, separate feeding aggregations, namely Iceland-Denmark Strait; western Greenland; Newfoundland (including the Labrador coast); Gulf of St. Lawrence; and Gulf of Maine-Scotian Shelf. Individual whales returned annually to a particular feeding region, but whales from all feeding aggregations migrated to nearshore areas and banks in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands for breeding. Some whales from all feeding aggregations migrated north past the Bermuda Islands in Spring. The variance-weighted mean of annual capture-recapture estimates of the total North Atlantic humpback population for years 1979-1986 was 5,505±2,617 (95% CI).